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Axel Steiger

7 papers in the library · 410 citations · publishing 2011-2025

Papers

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Electrophysiological Correlates of Lucid Dreaming: Sensor and Source Level Signatures.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience May 14, 2025 Çağatay Demirel, Jarrod Gott, Kristoffer Appel et al. 8 citations

Lucid dreaming (LD) is a state of conscious awareness of the ongoing oneiric state, predominantly linked to REM sleep. Progress in understanding its neurobiological basis has been hindered by small sample sizes, diverse EEG setups, and artifacts like saccadic eye movements. To address these challenges in characterizing the electrophysiological correlates of LD, we introduced an adaptive...

Sleep fragmentation and lucid dreaming.

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2020 Jarrod Gott, Michael Rak, Leonore Bovy et al. 23 citations

Lucid dreaming-the phenomenon of experiencing waking levels of self-reflection within one's dreams-is associated with more wake-like levels of neural activation in prefrontal brain regions. In addition, alternating periods of wakefulness and sleep might increase the likelihood of experiencing a lucid dream. Here we investigate the association between sleep fragmentation and lucid dreaming, with...

Increased Lucid Dreaming Frequency in Narcolepsy

Sleep April 30, 2015 Michael Rak, P. Beitinger, Axel Steiger et al. 56 citations

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Nightmares are a frequent symptom in narcolepsy. Lucid dreaming, i.e., the phenomenon of becoming aware of the dreaming state during dreaming, has been demonstrated to be of therapeutic value for recurrent nightmares. Data on lucid dreaming in narcolepsy patients, however, is sparse. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of recalled dreams (DF), nightmares (NF),...

Neural correlates of insight in dreaming and psychosis.

Sleep Medicine Reviews April 1, 2015 Martin Dresler, Renate Wehrle, Victor I. Spoormaker et al.

The idea that dreaming can serve as a model for psychosis has a long and honourable tradition, however it is notoriously speculative. Here we demonstrate that recent research on the phenomenon of lucid dreaming sheds new light on the debate. Lucid dreaming is a rare state of sleep in which the dreamer gains insight into his state of mind during dreaming. Recent electroencephalogram (EEG) and...

Volitional components of consciousness vary across wakefulness, dreaming and lucid dreaming

Frontiers in Psychology 2014 Martin Dresler, Leandra Eibl, Christian Fischer et al. 52 citations

Consciousness is a multifaceted concept; its different aspects vary across species, vigilance states, or health conditions. While basal aspects of consciousness like perceptions and emotions are present in many states and species, higher-order aspects like reflective or volitional capabilities seem to be most pronounced in awake humans. Here we assess the experience of volition across different...

Neural Correlates of Dream Lucidity Obtained from Contrasting Lucid versus Non-Lucid REM Sleep: A Combined EEG/fMRI Case Study

Sleep June 29, 2012 Martin Dresler, Renate Wehrle, Victor I. Spoormaker et al. 271 citations

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To investigate the neural correlates of lucid dreaming. DESIGN: Parallel EEG/fMRI recordings of night sleep. SETTING: Sleep laboratory and fMRI facilities. PARTICIPANTS: Four experienced lucid dreamers. INTERVENTIONS: N/A. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Out of 4 participants, one subject had 2 episodes of verified lucid REM sleep of sufficient length to be analyzed by fMRI. During...

Dreamed movement elicits activation in the sensorimotor cortex.

Current biology : CB November 8, 2011 Martin Dresler, Stefan P. Koch, Renate Wehrle et al.

Since the discovery of the close association between rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and dreaming, much effort has been devoted to link physiological signatures of REM sleep to the contents of associated dreams [1-4]. Due to the impossibility of experimentally controlling spontaneous dream activity, however, a direct demonstration of dream contents by neuroimaging methods is lacking. By...