Frontiers in Sleep
June 24, 2026
Adam Haar Horowitz, Karen R Konkoly, Michelle Carr et al.
Targeted dream incubation (TDI) is a highly effective method for eliciting hypnagogic dreams related to specific topics through the presentation of verbal prompts and serial awakenings at sleep onset. In this pilot study, we tested whether TDI at sleep onset can effectively direct dream content in subsequent rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We allowed participants a daytime nap opportunity...
Sleep
May 1, 2026
Westley Youngren, Victoria West Staples, Emma Angle et al.
Abstract Introduction Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) is the process of giving an individual auditory cues (i.e., “think of a tree”) while they are falling asleep, with the goal of shaping dream content (into something such as a tree). Recent research has demonstrated TDI may be able to increase dream self-efficacy (DSE) and influence other mental health outcomes. Thus, our study explored how...
SLEEPJ
May 1, 2026
Victoria West Staples, Westley Youngren, Emma Angle et al.
Both heightened nightmare (NM) distress, intense negative emotional reactions to nightmares, and low dream self-efficacy (DSE; the perceived ability to manage or influence dream experiences), are understudied contributors to posttraumatic functioning. Individuals with lower DSE shows increased suicide risk in trauma survivors and may increase emotional disturbances during sleep, while NM...
Sleep
May 1, 2025
Robert Stickgold, Alon Shamir, Noa Brande-Eilat et al.
1 citation
Abstract Introduction Recent studies and anecdotal reports suggest that sleep-onset hypnagogic dreams can contain creative insights, in some cases leading to Nobel prizes. While such reports are rare, targeted dream incubation (TDI) can induce dreams on pre-selected topics, such as “a tree,” in 70% of dream reports collected shortly after sleep onset, as well as a subsequent increase in...
Sleep
May 1, 2025
Westley Youngren, Emma Angle, Victoria West Staples et al.
Abstract Introduction Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) is the process of utilizing verbal cues (such as, “while you try to fall asleep, try and think of a tree”) during pre-sleep stages in order to directly shape dream content. Preliminary results have demonstrated that TDI may be able to increase dreaming self-efficacy (DSE). Our study aimed to replicate and extend initial findings by examining...
Sleep
May 1, 2025
Westley Youngren, Emma Angle, Victoria West Staples et al.
Research has begun to identify self-efficacy as a crucial variable related to positive treatment outcomes. For treatments targeting nightmares, self-efficacy related to dreaming (DSE) has been proposed to be a key mechanism of change. Additionally, a robust amount of research exists that links nightmares to suicide, suggesting that mechanisms related to trauma-related nightmares may also be...
SLEEP Advances
March 8, 2025
Westley Youngren, Adam Haar Horowitz, Victoria West Staples et al.
4 citations
Abstract This preliminary study investigates the potential for a technique that enables purposeful guiding of dream content (Targeted Dream Incubation; TDI) to change the degree to which an individual feels in control of their dreams (Dream Self-Efficacy; DSE). DSE is a subset of a larger concept of self-efficacy relating to one’s belief in their own abilities and competencies. Examining DSE...
Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society
2025
Robert Stickgold, Funke Sangodeyi
A central tenet of Freudian dream theory holds that there is thematic coherence within all dreams, even those containing scene and plot discontinuities. While other models support varying degrees of dream coherence, none address the question of how, or even whether, coherence can be identified in dreams with such discontinuities. Here, we objectively test the ability of judges to evaluate the...
Scientific Reports
May 15, 2023
Adam Haar Horowitz, Kathleen Esfahany, Tomás Vega Galvez et al.
31 citations
The link between dreams and creativity has been a topic of intense speculation. Recent scientific findings suggest that sleep onset (known as N1) may be an ideal brain state for creative ideation. However, the specific link between N1 dream content and creativity has remained unclear. To investigate the contribution of N1 dream content to creative performance, we administered targeted dream...
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2020
Adam Haar Horowitz, Tony J. Cunningham, Pattie Maes et al.
Information processing during sleep is active, ongoing and accessible to engineering. Protocols such as targeted memory reactivation use sensory stimuli during sleep to reactivate memories and demonstrate subsequent, specific enhancement of their consolidation. These protocols rely on physiological, as opposed to phenomenological, evidence of their reactivation. While dream content can predict...
Journal of Sleep Research
February 1, 2019
Erin J. Wamsley, Robert Stickgold
Sleep following learning benefits memory. One model attributes this effect to the iterative "reactivation" of memory traces in the sleeping brain, demonstrated in animal models. Although technical limitations prohibit using the same methods to observe memory reactivation in the human brain, the study of mental activity during sleep provides an alternative method of observing memory activation...
Sleep
February 1, 2014
Erin J. Wamsley, Claire E H M Donjacour, Thomas E Scammell et al.
We investigated a generally unappreciated feature of the sleep disorder narcolepsy, in which patients mistake the memory of a dream for a real experience and form sustained delusions about significant events. We interviewed patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls to establish the prevalence of this complaint and identify its predictors. Academic medical centers in Boston, Massachusetts...
Sleep
2010
Erin J. Wamsley, Karen Perry, Ina Djonlagic et al.
Studies of neural activity in animals and humans suggest that experiences are "replayed" in cortical and hippocampal networks during NREM sleep. Here, we examine whether memory reactivation in sleeping humans might also be evident within reports of concomitant subjective experience (i.e., dreaming). Participants were trained on an engaging visuomotor learning task across a period of one or more...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
2003
Magdalena J Fosse, Roar Fosse, J Allan Hobson et al.
The activity that takes place in memory systems during sleep is likely to be related to the role of sleep in memory consolidation and learning, as well as to the generation of dream hallucinations. This study addressed the often-stated hypothesis that replay of whole episodic memories contributes to the multimodal hallucinations of sleep. Over a period of 14 days, 29 subjects kept a log of...
Science (New York, N.Y.)
November 2, 2001
Robert Stickgold, J A Hobson, Roar Fosse et al.
Converging evidence and new research methodologies from across the neurosciences permit the neuroscientific study of the role of sleep in off-line memory reprocessing, as well as the nature and function of dreaming. Evidence supports a role for sleep in the consolidation of an array of learning and memory tasks. In addition, new methodologies allow the experimental manipulation of dream content...
Journal of Sleep Research
June 1, 2001
E F Pace-Schott, T Gersh, R Silvestri et al.
Clinical lore and a small number of published studies report that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) intensify dreaming. This study examines the dream effects of paroxetine and fluvoxamine in order to both increase clinical knowledge of these agents and to test an important potential method for probing the relationship between REM sleep neurobiology and dreaming in humans....
Science
October 13, 2000
Robert Stickgold, April Malia, Denise Maguire et al.
Participants playing the computer game Tetris reported intrusive, stereotypical, visual images of the game at sleep onset. Three amnesic patients with extensive bilateral medial temporal lobe damage produced similar hypnagogic reports despite being unable to recall playing the game, suggesting that such imagery may arise without important contribution from the declarative memory system. In...