PLoS One
October 11, 2017
Raphael Vallat, Benoit Chatard, Mark Blagrove et al.
60 citations
Over seven days, 40 participants recorded their dreams and identified related waking-life elements (WLEs), including remote and trivial memories. On average, 83.4% of dream reports linked to at least one WLE. Among dated WLEs, 40.2% occurred the day before the dream, 26.1% in the prior month, 15.8% in the prior year, and 17.9% more than a year earlier. While most incorporated WLEs were rated as important, those from the day before were mostly mundane, consistent with Freud's day residues. Both positive and negative WLEs were rated as emotionally less intense in dreams than in waking, supporting the emotional regulation hypothesis of dreaming.
Personality and Individual Differences
June 1, 1994
Mark Blagrove, Melissa D. Tucker
32 citations
No Summary
May 16, 2023
William Wong, Kátia C. Andrade, Thomas Andrillon et al.
21 citations
preprint
A new open-access database, DREAM, combines sleep magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) recordings with standardized dream reports to enable large-scale neurocognitive research on dreaming. The initial release includes 20 datasets from 561 participants and 2649 awakenings, each with at least 20 seconds of high-frequency M/EEG data and a classification of the subject's experience. Analyses demonstrate that features extracted from EEG can predict whether a person reports having had a conscious experience during both REM and NREM sleep. The database aims to overcome the limitations of small sample sizes and methodological variability in dream research, allowing new questions to be addressed at a scale unattainable by individual labs.
Journal of Sleep Research
April 22, 2018
Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub, Elaine Van Rijn, Mairéad Phelan et al.
17 citations
Details from personally significant waking-life events are most likely to appear in REM-sleep dreams on the first two nights after the event and again five to seven nights later, a pattern known as the day-residue and dream-lag effects. In a 14-day diary study with 38 participants, only personally significant events showed this pattern, and only among the 19 participants who had fewer total correspondences between daily events and dreams. Major daily activities and major concerns did not show the effect. The U-shaped timeline may reflect REM-sleep-dependent memory consolidation, possibly linked to emotional memory processing. This study analyzed more dreams than any previous dream-lag study with trained participants.
Nature Communications
August 13, 2025
William Wong, Rubén Herzog, Kátia Cristine Andrade et al.
10 citations
A new open database, the DREAM database, combines standardized sleep magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) recordings with dream reports from 505 participants across 20 datasets, totaling 2,643 awakenings. Each awakening includes at least 20 seconds of high-resolution sleep EEG (≥100 Hz, ≥2 electrodes) and a classification of the sleeper's reported experience. Analyses showed that reports of conscious experiences during sleep can be predicted from objective EEG features in both REM and NREM sleep. The database aims to overcome limitations of small sample sizes and methodological variability in dream research, enabling larger-scale investigations of the neurocognitive basis of dreaming.
The American Journal of Psychology
September 18, 2019
Michael Schredl, Verena S. Struck, Christine Schwert et al.
5 citations
Gender differences in the dreams of children and adolescents mirror those seen in adults. In a large UK sample of 1,995 most recent dreams, boys reported more physical aggression and fewer female characters, while girls' dreams more often featured indoor settings. These patterns support the continuity hypothesis, which holds that dreams reflect waking life. Dream content analysis offers a window into the inner world of young people, revealing their experiences, thoughts, and concerns. Future studies should measure waking aggression, social contacts, and leisure activities to directly link waking and dreaming.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 1, 2018
Elaine Van Rijn, Alexander M Reid, Christopher L Edwards et al.
Daydreams more often incorporate major concerns from the previous two days than from earlier days, supporting a role for daydreams in processing current personal issues. However, personally significant events do not show this day-residue effect in daydreams, and there is no delayed incorporation from 5 to 7 days earlier, unlike what has been found for REM dreams. The study also failed to replicate the previously observed dream-lag effect for REM dreams, possibly due to methodological differences.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
September 1, 2016
Michael Schredl, Josie Henley-Einion, Mark Blagrove
Sharing dreams with others is very common. Among 1,375 participants, the frequency of dream sharing is linked to gender in adolescents (girls share more often than boys), extraversion, how often people recall their dreams, and how often they have nightmares. The authors suggest future research should examine with whom dreams are shared and whether sharing dreams has beneficial effects.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2015
Christopher L Edwards, Josie E Malinowski, Shauna L McGee et al.
Considering recent dreams in a structured group discussion can lead to personal insight, more so than discussing a recent waking event. In two small studies, participants who discussed a dream using either the Ullman or Schredl method reported high levels of experiential insight. For the Ullman method, insight ratings were significantly higher for dreams than for control events. The findings support the idea that reflecting on dream content helps identify waking-life sources and may generate personal realizations, possibly linked to REM sleep's role in emotional memory consolidation.
Laterality
January 1, 2014
Michael Schredl, Alan A Beaton, Josie Henley-Einion et al.
Right-handed and mixed-handed children and adolescents report recalling dreams more often than left-handed individuals, especially among adolescents. In a sample of 3,535 participants aged 6 to 18 years, right- and mixed/inconsistent handedness were linked to higher dream-recall frequency compared to left-handedness, with the effect stronger in adolescents than in children. The reasons for left-handers' lower dream recall remain unknown and require further investigation.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2013
Christopher L Edwards, Perrine Ruby, Josie E Malinowski et al.
Dreams can be a source of personal insight, supported by findings that sleep facilitates cognitive insight and REM sleep aids emotional memory consolidation. Metaphorical representations in dreams may enable novel insights. In 11 dream group discussion sessions using the Ullman Dream Appreciation technique with 11 participants (10 females, 1 male; mean age 19.2 years), self-ratings showed the technique effectively connects dream content to recent waking life, though only 14% of dream text had identifiable waking sources. The mean Exploration-Insight score on the Gains from Dream Interpretation questionnaire was very high, comparable to therapist-led methods, and associated with pre-group positive attitudes toward dreams. The need to distinguish insight from discovering a waking life source is discussed, along with difficulties in designing control conditions.
Consciousness and Cognition
June 1, 2011
Mark Blagrove, Josie Henley-Einion, Amanda Barnett et al.
The dream-lag effect describes a pattern where memories from the previous day are frequently incorporated into dreams, followed by a lower incorporation of memories from 2 to 4 days earlier, and then a higher incorporation of memories from 5 to 7 days earlier. In a study with 8 female participants who kept daily and dream diaries for 14 days, ratings of matches between dream reports and diary records showed a significant dream-lag effect for the 5-7 day period compared to baseline and the 2-4 day period. This suggests a possible memory processing function for sleep reflected in dream content. Both participants' and independent judges' ratings confirmed a significant day-residue effect.
PLoS One
January 1, 2011
Mark Blagrove, Nathalie C Fouquet, Josephine A Henley-Einion et al.
Events and memories from waking life can reappear in dreams, either literally or indirectly. Two temporal patterns are known: the day-residue effect (features from the previous day) and the dream-lag effect (features from 5–7 days earlier). Previous work used spontaneous home dream reports from both REM and NREM sleep. This study tested whether the dream-lag effect occurs only in REM or also in NREM stage 2 (N2) dreams. Twenty participants kept daily diaries for over a week, then slept in a laboratory for two nights. REM and N2 dreams were collected, and participants rated correspondence between each dream and diary entry. The dream-lag effect appeared for REM but not N2 dreams, even after accounting for dream length.
International review of neurobiology
January 1, 2010
Mark Blagrove, Edward F Pace-Schott
People differ greatly in how often they recall dreams, what types of dreams they have (such as nightmares), and what their dreams are about. This chapter reviews research linking these differences to waking-life experiences and to brain biology. Although general dream recall and dream content show stable, trait-like patterns, few psychometric measures reliably predict them. More success has come from studying specific dream types—nightmares and lucid dreams—and how waking events shape dream content. Recent work exploring the neurobiological basis of these individual differences is also reviewed.
Psychopharmacology
March 1, 2009
Mark Blagrove, Celia J. A. Morgan, H Valerie Curran et al.
Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, increases the unpleasantness of dreams for three nights after a sub-anaesthetic dose. In a placebo-controlled study with 30 healthy volunteers, those given ketamine reported significantly more unpleasant dreams, with a threefold increase in the odds of having an unpleasant dream. The number of dreams recalled did not differ between groups. People who already had frequent nightmares at home were more likely to have unpleasant dreams after ketamine. This effect may reflect a lingering psychotogenic influence or disrupted sleep physiology not captured by standard symptom questionnaires.