Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
December 13, 2020
Jennifer Windt
56 citations
The conventional view that sleep and wakefulness mark a sharp divide in conscious experience is challenged by recent research showing that mind wandering occupies much of waking life and that dreaming resembles intensified mind wandering. This suggests a continuum of spontaneous experience spanning both states. A conceptual framework distinguishing subtypes of spontaneous thoughts and experiences independently of behavioral state is proposed and applied to findings from dream and mind-wandering research. The argument holds that assessing the relationship between spontaneous experience and sleep or wakefulness requires looking beyond dreams to include dreamless sleep-related experiences. Considering the full range of spontaneous thoughts and experiences reveals variation both within and across behavioral states, undermining the coarse-grained distinction between sleep and waking and their assumed link to conscious states.
heiDOK (Heidelberg University)
January 1, 2010
Valdas Noreika, Jennifer Windt, Bigna Lenggenhager et al.
54 citations
Brain imaging studies of lucid dreaming have revealed correlations with neural activity, but causal methods are needed to understand the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in metacognitive insight during dreams. The authors propose using transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation, and galvanic vestibular stimulation to directly interfere with neural functioning during sleep. They argue that aspects of dream lucidity can be investigated in ordinary, nonlucid dreams, enabling more comprehensive and efficient experiments. This approach would deepen understanding of self-consciousness in dreams and integrate dream research into broader neurophilosophical theories of consciousness and the self.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2020
William Wong, Valdas Noreika, Levente Móró et al.
35 citations
In a test of whether brain activity alone can reveal when someone is dreaming, researchers used an unsupervised machine learning classifier to distinguish dreamful from dreamless sleep based on EEG spectral power and electrode location. Nine participants contributed 54 one-minute polysomnograms from non-rapid eye movement sleep—27 with dreams and 27 without. A blinded Analysis Team attempted to classify each recording over five iterations with gradually reduced blindness. At no stage did the classifier perform significantly better than chance, indicating that EEG spectral power features could not reliably detect signatures of phenomenal consciousness in this dataset.
Monash University Research Portal
January 1, 2015
Jennifer Windt
30 citations
The author proposes extending Evan Thompson's argument for dreamless sleep experience. An analogy is drawn between Indian philosophical debates about reports of peaceful sleep and scientific dream research debates about the trustworthiness of dream reports, leading to the conclusion that the default view of consciousness disappearing in dreamless sleep is inconsistent with methodological assumptions of scientific dream research. A conceptual model is sketched in which dreamless sleep experience involves pure subjective temporality—phenomenal now and sense of duration without further intentional content—making it a candidate for minimal phenomenal experience. Three empirical examples are discussed: minimal lucid dreams, white dreams, and sleep-state misperception in subjective insomnia.
Frontiers in Psychology
July 8, 2020
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
25 citations
Expert texts on Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation describe silence/quietness as a key feature of contentless experiences—states where thoughts, perceptions, and mental images are absent. Using evidence synthesis, 135 expert texts were systematically selected and analyzed. Silence/quietness is closely linked to stillness, absence of concepts, mental activity/noise, thoughts, and disturbance. It may also reflect absence of non-auditory perceptions, mental images, and negative feelings, fitting a conception of complete calm. The texts do not clearly distinguish silence/quietness from other features like stillness. Connections between silence/quietness and other features vary in closeness, revealing fine distinctions and ambiguities that raise new research questions.
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.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
May 24, 2022
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
17 citations
Meditation experiences often described as contentless—such as those in Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation—are not truly devoid of mental content. A review of 135 expert texts from these three traditions identified 65 features reported or implied across the practices, with most shared among all three. However, Shamatha involves substantially greater attentional stability and vividness. Numerous forms of content, including wakefulness, naturalness, calm, bliss/joy, and freedom, are present in these experiences. The findings challenge the classical view that such states are an identical pure consciousness, leaving it an open question whether they should be classed as such.
Mindfulness
June 1, 2023
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Lydia Brown et al.
15 citations
People who practice Shamatha, Thai Forest, or Stillness Meditation typically report a highly positive experience of stillness or silence with little awareness of thoughts and perceptions, but with a high degree of abstract content such as calm and mental relaxation. Across the three traditions, robust differences emerged in reports of bliss/joy, wakefulness, absorptiveness, and depth. The experiences are contentless only in the sense of lacking obvious mental content like thoughts, not in being devoid of all content, challenging the classical view that such states are identical across traditions.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 12, 2025
Thomas Andrillon, Antoine Lutz, Jennifer Windt et al.
14 citations
Moments during wakefulness that seem empty of any reportable thought, called mind blanking (MB), are not simply gaps in experience but distinct mental states with their own characteristics. This review maps MB by examining how people report it, its brain activity, and its links to related phenomena such as meditation and sleep. The authors propose that ongoing experience varies in richness, and contentless events represent a diverse category of mental states. They argue that recognizing MB as a reportable mental category is essential for a full understanding of how the mind works during wakefulness.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
August 1, 2024
Teresa Campillo-Ferrer, Adriana Alcaraz-Sánchez, Ema Demšar et al.
14 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), where a person feels located outside their physical body, often occur spontaneously near or during sleep. This review examines sleep-related OBEs and proposes that maintaining consciousness during the transition from wakefulness to REM sleep (sleep-onset REM periods) may enable them. A new conceptual model is introduced to distinguish sleep-related OBEs from similar states like lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, and to suggest possible brain activity patterns (polysomnographic features) underlying them. The predictive coding framework is applied to connect sleep-related OBEs with those occurring during wakefulness.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
June 2, 2022
Toby J. Woods, Jennifer Windt, Olivia Carter
13 citations
Contentless experience, or pure consciousness, is a state free of mental content like thoughts, perceptions, and imagery. Three meditation practices—Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation—are said to access this state, but the paths differ. A review of 135 expert texts reveals that Shamatha and Transcendental Meditation superficially require focusing on an object, while Stillness Meditation does not. However, a detailed analysis shows Shamatha is posturally closer to Stillness Meditation but differs in requiring greater attentional stability, vividness, focusing, less tolerance of mind-wandering, more monitoring, and deliberate control. Achieving contentless experience through Shamatha is slower, more difficult, and less frequent. These findings inform meditation taxonomies, consciousness research, neuroscience, clinical practice, and practitioners.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 24, 2020
Thomas Andrillon, Angus C. Burns, Teigane Mackay et al.
13 citations
preprint
Attentional lapses—moments when focus slips—are linked to mind wandering (task-unrelated thoughts) or mind blanking (a halt in the stream of consciousness). By analyzing behavior, subjective reports, and high-density EEG in healthy participants performing a task, the authors found that both types of lapses are preceded by spatially and temporally localized slow waves in the brain—a pattern typical of the transition to sleep. The location of these slow waves distinguished between sluggish versus impulsive behaviors and between mind wandering versus mind blanking. The findings suggest that attentional lapses share a common physiological origin: the emergence of local sleep-like activity within the awake brain.
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.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2019
Jennifer Windt
8 citations
A commentary on Nielsen's proposal that microdreams—experiences during the earliest stages of sleep onset—can reveal how dream imagery forms. The author examines microdreams through simulation views, which define dreaming as an immersive virtual-world experience centered on a virtual self, and evaluates expanding the oneiragogic spectrum to include kinesis. The conclusion is that although some microdreams may not qualify as minimal dreams, studying them can address key questions in dream research and may offer a distinct route to full dreaming.
October 17, 2024
Thomas Andrillon, Antoine Lutz, Jennifer Windt et al.
4 citations
preprint
Mind blanking (MB) refers to moments during wakefulness when people report no specific thoughts. This review maps MB by examining its reportable expressions, brain signatures, and links to meditative practices and sleep (white dreams). The authors propose a mechanistic account linking MB to changes at physiological, neural, and cognitive levels. They argue that ongoing experience varies in richness and that seemingly contentless events are distinct mental states with their own diversity, challenging the view of the mind as primarily content-oriented.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
June 11, 2025
Manuela Kirberg, Jonathan Robinson, Jennifer Windt
3 citations
Spontaneous thoughts and experiences like dreaming and mind wandering share many features but also differ in important ways. This study compared 340 questionnaire responses about dreaming and waking mind wandering, using a self-caught design to capture spontaneous experiences in daily life. Mixed-effect binary logistic regression identified dimensions that significantly predicted either dreaming or mind wandering, revealing differences between the two states. Visual and immersive imagery and scene-organization were central to dream phenomenology. Results showed a complex picture of similarities and differences, suggesting that dreaming may be intensified along certain dimensions compared to mind wandering.
Scientific Reports
March 13, 2024
Matt P D Gwyther, Bigna Lenggenhager, Jennifer Windt et al.
3 citations
People with stronger depersonalisation traits—feeling detached from their own body—report more frequent dreams from an outside-observer perspective and more dreams with distinct or altered bodily sensations, along with more nightmares and higher dream recall. They also show weaker body boundaries and less trust in internal bodily signals while awake. These findings suggest that dreaming does not provide a temporary escape from depersonalisation symptoms; instead, the dream state mirrors the waking disruptions in sense of self and body.
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
January 5, 2026
Jennifer Windt, Manuela Kirberg, Tomas Andrillon
This special issue brings together theoretical and empirical work on dreaming and waking mind wandering, two areas with growing attention in cognitive neuroscience and psychology but limited philosophical exploration. Despite being studied separately, phenomenological and neurophysiological overlaps between waking mind wandering and sleep-related experiences indicate they are closely linked. These connections prompt questions about the nature and functions of spontaneous mental phenomena, their relationship to wakefulness and sleep, and implications for theories of attention, action, and consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2026
Manuela Kirberg, Jennifer Windt
Dreaming and mind wandering share features of spontaneous thought, but their precise relationship remains unclear. Bizarreness—unusual features of experience—has traditionally been seen as unique to dreams, though some propose it exists on a continuum where dreaming is an intensified form of mind wandering. Analyzing 379 spontaneous reports from the same participants in a naturalistic setting, the findings show that both dreaming and waking mind wandering have unique bizarreness profiles with similarities and differences. The comparison between the two changes depending on the type, subtype, and content of bizarreness measured. Thus, dreams cannot simply be described as intensified mind wandering; a more nuanced approach with specific measures is needed.
September 30, 2025
Toby J. Woods, Andrew W. Corcoran, Olivia Carter et al.
preprint
A 15-minute session of Stillness Meditation, which involves skillfully doing nothing, is calming, pleasant, and easy for meditation-naive adults, not aversive as earlier research suggested. In a randomized trial with 165 participants, those practicing Stillness Meditation reported the session as calm, pleasant, and easy, and showed increases in heart rate variability and interbeat interval from baseline. While focused attention led to higher self-reported calm than Stillness Meditation or an audiobook, there were no differences in easiness, pleasantness, or cardiac measures between groups. The findings validate Stillness Meditation as a tool for studying pure consciousness.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2025
Jasmine Walter, Thomas Andrillon, Jennifer Windt
Spontaneous thoughts and experiences (STE), such as mind wandering and dreaming, may occur in patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC). The evidence is indirect and inconclusive, but suggests STE could affect diagnosis, which currently focuses on detecting consciousness. Understanding these experiences might also illuminate subjective experience and quality of life in DoC, about which little is known. Because diagnostic decisions can have life-or-death consequences, it is important to use measures sensitive to internally directed conscious experiences. Further research is needed to explore STE in DoC and its implications for quality of life.
April 29, 2024
Manuela Kirberg, Jonathan Edward Robinson, Jennifer Windt
preprint
Spontaneous thoughts like dreaming and mind wandering make up much of human consciousness, but their similarities and differences are not well understood. This study compared 340 questionnaires on dreaming and mind wandering, covering 13 to 27 dimensions depending on participant responses. Using a naturalistic self-caught design in daily life, rather than laboratory settings, the researchers applied mixed-effect binary logistic regression models to identify dimensions that significantly predicted whether an experience was a dream or mind wandering. Visual and immersive imagery and scene-organization were central to dream phenomenology. Results revealed a complex pattern of differences and similarities, suggesting dreaming may be an intensified form of mind wandering along certain dimensions.
Topoi
December 3, 2025
Gaia Mizzon, Jennifer Windt
The concept of narrative is widely used in philosophical discussions of dreams, but little attention has been paid to how assumptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the debate. The authors argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with dream reports and then with dreams themselves, leading to the use of features of literary fiction as an explanatory framework for understanding dreams and their formation. Focusing on the categories of authorship and composition, they show that divergent philosophical accounts share the unacknowledged assumption that dreams have a narrative structure and that dreaming is a process of narrative construction. The paper lays groundwork for exploring narrative thinking in spontaneous thought during both wakefulness and sleep.
Mindfulness
May 1, 2022
Tess Guthrie, Julian R. Matthews, Richard Chambers et al.
A brief body scan meditation makes people more susceptible to a bodily illusion (the rubber hand illusion), suggesting that a short mindfulness induction increases attention to ambiguous bodily signals. However, 14 days of daily body scan training reduces the illusion more than a control activity, indicating that longer-term mindfulness practice dampens the integration of conflicting sensory information. The findings suggest that state and trait mindfulness cultivated through body scan meditation have opposite effects on how the brain combines signals from different senses, with initial heightened attention giving way to acceptance over time.
Nature Communications
June 29, 2021
Thomas Andrillon, Angus C. Burns, Teigane Mackay et al.
Attentional lapses—moments when focus drifts to unrelated thoughts (mind wandering) or the stream of consciousness halts (mind blanking)—are linked to localized slow-wave brain activity resembling sleep. Healthy participants performed a task while high-density electroencephalography recorded their brain activity; random interruptions prompted them to report whether their mental state was task-focused, mind-wandering, or mind-blanking. Slow waves preceded reports of both mind wandering and mind blanking, and their location distinguished between sluggish and impulsive behaviors as well as between the two types of lapses. The findings suggest that attentional lapses share a common physiological origin: the emergence of local sleep-like activity within the awake brain.