Nature Communications
August 13, 2025
William Wong, Rubén Herzog, Kátia Cristine Andrade et al.
10 citations
Magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies of dreaming are an essential paradigm in the investigation of neurocognitive processes of human consciousness during sleep, but they are limited by the number of observations that can be collected per study. Dream research also involves substantial methodological and conceptual variability, which poses problems for the integration of results. To...
May 16, 2023
William Wong, Kátia C. Andrade, Thomas Andrillon et al.
21 citations
preprint
Magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies of dreaming are an essential paradigm in the investigation of neurocognitive processes of human consciousness during sleep, but they are limited by the number of observations that can be collected per study. Dream research also involves substantial methodological and conceptual variability, which poses problems for the integration of results. To...
September 9, 2021
M. Blagrove, J. Lockheart
preprint
There are many theories of the function of dreams, such as memory consolidation, emotion processing, threat simulation and social simulation. In general, such theories hold that the function of dreams occurs within sleep; occurs for unrecalled dreams as well as for dream that are recalled on awakening; and that conscious recall of dreams is not necessary for their function to occur. In...
The American Journal of Psychology
September 18, 2019
Michael Schredl, Verena S. Struck, Christine Schwert et al.
5 citations
Abstract Although gender differences in the dreams of adults have been studied extensively, large-scale studies in children and adolescents are scarce. The UK Library Study collected 1,995 most recent dreams of children and adolescents. Boys reported more physical aggression and fewer female characters in their dreams, whereas indoor settings were more prominent in girls’ dreams, results that...
Psychology of Consciousness
2019
M. Blagrove, Christopher Edwards, E. van Rijn et al.
Throughout history there have been reports and claims that consideration of dreams can produce personal realizations and insight. We assessed Exploration-Insight scores associated with discussing Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) dreams in connection with recent waking life experiences. Thirty-one participants were cued in the sleep laboratory for a daydream report and then awakened...
Journal of Sleep Research
April 22, 2018
Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub, Elaine Van Rijn, Mairéad Phelan et al.
17 citations
Incorporation of details from waking life events into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreams has been found to be highest on the 2 nights after, and then 5-7 nights after, the event. These are termed, respectively, the day-residue and dream-lag effects. This study is the first to categorize types of waking life experiences and compare their incorporation into dreams across multiple successive...
Consciousness and Cognition
February 1, 2018
Elaine Van Rijn, Alexander M Reid, Christopher L Edwards et al.
This study investigates the time course of incorporation of waking life experiences into daydreams. Thirty-one participants kept a diary for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs) and major concerns (MCs). They were then cued for daydream, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and N2 dream reports in the sleep laboratory. There was a higher incorporation into...
PLoS One
October 11, 2017
Raphael Vallat, Benoit Chatard, Mark Blagrove et al.
60 citations
Several studies have demonstrated that dream content is related to the waking life of the dreamer. However, the characteristics of the memory sources incorporated into dreams are still unclear. We designed a new protocol to investigate remote memories and memories of trivial experiences, both relatively unexplored in dream content until now. Upon awakening, for 7 days, participants identified...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
September 1, 2016
Michael Schredl, Josie Henley-Einion, Mark Blagrove
Although dreams are very private experiences, they are often shared with others. The findings of the present study ( N = 1,375) indicate that sharing dreams is indeed very common and that dream sharing frequency is related to gender (only in adolescents, with girls sharing dreams more often than boys), extraversion, dream recall frequency, and nightmare frequency. Future studies should study...
ORCA Online Research @Cardiff
2016
Michael Schredl, Josie Henley, Mark Blagrove
7 citations
Research that has focused on the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions and lucid dreaming frequency has been restricted to student samples. The present study included adolescents and adults (N = 1375). i.e., the sample included a large range of ages. Lucid dreaming was more strongly related to openness to experiences compared to previous findings. The small but significant...
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
July 1, 2015
Elaine Van Rijn, J-B Eichenlaub, Penelope A. Lewis et al.
Incorporation of details from waking life events into Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep dreams has been found to be highest on the night after, and then 5-7 nights after events (termed, respectively, the day-residue and dream-lag effects). In experiment 1, 44 participants kept a daily log for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs), and major concerns...
Frontiers in Psychology
2015
Christopher L Edwards, Josie E Malinowski, Shauna L McGee et al.
There have been reports and claims in the psychotherapeutic literature that the consideration of recent dreams can result in personal realizations and insight. There is theoretical support for these claims from work on rapid eye movement (REM) sleep having a function of the consolidation of emotional memories and the creative formation of connections between new and older memories. To...
Laterality
2014
Michael Schredl, Alan A Beaton, Josie Henley-Einion et al.
The ability to recall a dream upon waking up in the morning has been linked to a broad variety of factors such as personality, creativity, sleep behaviour and cognitive function. There have been conflicting findings as to whether dream recall is related more to the right or to the left hemisphere, and conflicting findings regarding the relationship of dream-recall frequency to handedness. We...
Frontiers in Psychology
2013
Christopher L Edwards, Perrine Ruby, Josie E Malinowski et al.
This paper addresses claims that dreams can be a source of personal insight. Whereas there has been anecdotal backing for such claims, there is now tangential support from findings of the facilitative effect of sleep on cognitive insight, and of REM sleep in particular on emotional memory consolidation. Furthermore, the presence in dreams of metaphorical representations of waking life indicates...
Consciousness and Cognition
June 1, 2011
Mark Blagrove, Josie Henley-Einion, Amanda Barnett et al.
The dream-lag effect refers to there being, after the frequent incorporation of memory elements from the previous day into dreams (the day-residue), a lower incorporation of memory elements from 2 to 4 days before the dream, but then an increased incorporation of memory elements from 5 to 7 days before the dream. Participants (n=8, all female) kept a daily diary and a dream diary for 14 days...
PLoS One
2011
Mark Blagrove, Nathalie C Fouquet, Josephine A Henley-Einion et al.
This study investigates evidence, from dream reports, for memory consolidation during sleep. It is well-known that events and memories from waking life can be incorporated into dreams. These incorporations can be a literal replication of what occurred in waking life, or, more often, they can be partial or indirect. Two types of temporal relationship have been found to characterize the time of...
International review of neurobiology
2010
Mark Blagrove, Edward F Pace-Schott
Individuals differ greatly in their dream recall frequency, in their incidence of recalling types of dreams, such as nightmares, and in the content of their dreams. This chapter reviews work on the waking life correlates of these differences between people in their experience of dreaming and reviews some of the neurobiological correlates of these individual differences. The chapter concludes...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
December 1, 2009
Katy A. Jones, M. Blagrove, A. C. Parrott
41 citations
This study investigated the associations between chronic cannabis and Ecstasy/MDMA use and one objective and two subjective measure of creativity. Fifteen abstinent Ecstasy users, 15 abstinent cannabis users, and 15 nondrug-user controls, completed three measures of creativity: the Consequences behavioral test of creativity, self-assessed performance on the Consequences test, and Gough's Trait...
Psychopharmacology
March 1, 2009
Mark Blagrove, Celia J. A. Morgan, H Valerie Curran et al.
Ketamine is an N-methyl-D: -aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist with psychotogenic effects and for which there are diverse reports of whether pleasant or unpleasant dreams result during anaesthesia, post-operatively or after sub-anaesthetic use. To assess in healthy volunteers the incidence of unpleasant dreams over the three nights after receiving a sub-anaesthetic dose of ketamine, in...
Journal of Sleep Research
May 26, 2004
Mark Blagrove, Laura Boyd Farmer, E. R. L. Williams
215 citations
Nightmares can be defined as very disturbing dreams, the events or emotions of which cause the dreamer to wake up. In contrast, unpleasant dreams can be defined in terms of a negative emotional rating of a dream, irrespective of whether or not the emotions or events of the dream woke the dreamer. This study addresses whether frequency of unpleasant dreams is a better index of low well-being...