Scientific Reports
May 15, 2023
Adam Haar Horowitz, Kathleen Esfahany, Tomás Vega Galvez et al.
31 citations
Sleep onset (N1 sleep) enhances creative performance more than wakefulness, and successfully incubating a specific theme into N1 dreams further boosts creativity. Participants who received auditory cues during sleep onset to introduce a theme showed greater semantic distance and better performance on theme-related creativity tasks compared to those who remained awake. This provides the first controlled evidence that dream content itself, not just N1 sleep, contributes to creative enhancement, supporting N1 as a cognitive state with heightened associative divergence.
December 21, 2022
Félix Schoeller, Abhinandan Jain, Vladimir Adrien et al.
10 citations
preprint
Aesthetic chills—shivers and goosebumps experienced during intense emotional moments—may offer therapeutic potential for depression. In an initial exploratory study, chill-inducing stimuli appeared to influence core depressive schemas, particularly shame and self-acceptance. The mechanism of action may parallel that of psychedelic and psychotherapeutic experiences, leading to similar positive outcomes. Further research is needed to assess feasibility and safety as a clinical intervention.
BMC Psychiatry
January 10, 2024
Abhinandan Jain, Vladimir Adrien, Pattie Maes et al.
9 citations
Depression affects over 300 million people globally, and current treatments have limited effectiveness. Aesthetic chills—peak emotional experiences involving shivers or goosebumps—may shift maladaptive beliefs in depression by influencing reward pathways. In a study of 96 people with major depressive disorder, chill-inducing multimedia positively influenced core self-related beliefs, as measured by the Young Positive Schema Questionnaire. The phenomenology of chills resembled altered states from psychedelics like psilocybin. These preliminary results suggest aesthetic chills could become a non-pharmacological intervention for depression, though more research on neurophysiology, practicality, and safety is needed.
Frontiers in Sleep
May 28, 2024
Lucas Bellaiche, Adam Haar Horowitz, Mason McClay et al.
5 citations
Hypnagogia, the transition from wakefulness to sleep, involves dreams that forge connections among unrelated concepts, potentially boosting creativity, learning, and memory. Mind-wandering, a form of spontaneous thought, may rely on similar processes. This study tested a new tool called Dormio Light to cue and index hypnagogic dream content remotely, cheaply, and quickly. In 80 participants (34 female), the tool successfully cued specific thought content (e.g., a tree) during hypnagogia and mind-wandering, with incubation rates matching lab studies. Phenomenological differences emerged between the two states. The tool offers a practical way to study these cognitive states and their relationship.
SLEEP Advances
March 8, 2025
Westley Youngren, Adam Haar Horowitz, Victoria West Staples et al.
4 citations
A technique called Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI), which guides dream content during a nap, may increase how much control people feel over their dreams (Dream Self-Efficacy; DSE). In 25 participants who completed surveys before and after a TDI protocol during N1 sleep, DSE levels were significantly higher afterward. DSE relates to broader self-efficacy and has been linked to better outcomes in therapies for trauma-related nightmares. The findings suggest TDI could improve sleep-related interventions, though further research with control conditions is needed.
Research Square (Research Square)
November 14, 2023
Félix Schoeller, Abhinandan Jain, Vladimir Adrien et al.
2 citations
Aesthetic chills—shivers or goosebumps from music, film, or art—may help shift deep-seated negative self-beliefs in people with depression. In a study of 96 patients with major depressive disorder, those exposed to a validated set of chill-inducing multimedia showed positive changes in core schemas, as measured by the Young Schema Questionnaire, and reported emotional breakthroughs similar to altered states from psychedelic substances like psilocybin. The findings suggest that the biological processes behind aesthetic chills could be developed into a non-pharmacological intervention for depression, though more research is needed on the underlying neurophysiology and on safety and effectiveness.
Frontiers in Sleep
June 24, 2026
Adam Haar Horowitz, Karen R Konkoly, Michelle Carr et al.
A pilot study tested whether targeted dream incubation (TDI) at sleep onset can direct dream content into subsequent REM sleep. Eleven participants received verbal prompts about a tree and were awakened serially at sleep onset, then during a daytime nap. All 11 successfully incubated the target theme at sleep onset. Of the eight who entered REM sleep, four (50%) incorporated the tree into their first REM dream, and five (63%) did so in later REM dreams. Results suggest TDI may influence REM dream content, offering a method to explore how dream generation and function may be continuous or differ across sleep stages.
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2020
Adam Haar Horowitz, Tony J. Cunningham, Pattie Maes et al.
A new wearable device called Dormio automatically delivers auditory dream incubations during the hypnagogic period at sleep onset, enabling targeted information to be incorporated directly into dream content through a process termed targeted dream incubation (TDI). The protocol demonstrates that dream content can be experimentally manipulated, and the authors discuss how TDI can serve as a tool for controlled research on the role of dreams in memory consolidation. The work opens the black box of dreaming by providing a method to engineer dream content and study its relationship to overnight memory transformation.