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...
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...
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...
Falling asleep is paralleled by a loss of conscious awareness and reduced capacity to process external stimuli. Little is known on sleep-associated changes of spontaneously synchronized anatomical networks as detected by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). We employed functional connectivity analysis of rs-fMRI series obtained from 25 healthy participants, covering...