DreamingMarch 26, 2026Jai Marin, Noah Thomas, Lan Nguyen et al.
Dreams represent a universal human experience linked to emotional regulation, memory processing, and psychological well-being, yet the extent to which stable personality traits shape dream experiences remains unclear. Previous reviews have either focused narrowly on nightmares or examined general sleep-related patterns, leaving questions about the broader role of personality in dreaming...
The relationship between mindfulness and the frequency with which one experiences lucid dreams is conceptually strong and can be grounded in the continuity hypothesis and in neuroscientific investigations. Only few studies have however been performed regarding this relationship, and comparisons are difficult to make due to methodological issues and discrepancies in results. This study aims to...
Objective/Background Our objective was to conduct a systematic review with meta-analysis to enhance our comprehension of the Big Five personality traits that are associated with nightmare frequency and distress and might thus serve as risk factors for frequent and distressing nightmares.Methods The inclusion criteria for studies were the use of a validated questionnaire to measure the Big Five...
Previous research has found behaviors associated with personality traits can be found in the dreams of those who possess them, suggesting a continuum between dreaming and waking life. The present study sought to investigate the association between dark tetrad traits (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism) and dream content. One hundred thirty-seven participants completed...
DreamingApril 13, 2023Dengle Yang, Wenyuan Wu, Yiyun Xia et al.
This study aimed at investigating the dream themes of Chinese elderly people during COVID-19 and its relationship with death anxiety. In this study, 264 participants from four cities in different regions of China were interviewed through one-on-one interviews. Nielsen's Typical Dream Questionnaire (TDQ) and Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) were also administered. The dream recall rate of the elderly...
DreamingNovember 17, 2022M. Simões, C. Farate, H. Espírito-Santo et al.
Research has shown that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were significant changes in sleep quality and dream activity. An increase in dream and nightmare recall frequency and a predominance of aversive emotional and phantasmatic dream content were recorded. The objective of the study was to analyze the pandemic's socio-occupational, psychological and experiential impact, focusing on sleep...
The aim of this study is to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the dream content of university students. This research, which is based on a qualitative design, is based on a phenomenological approach. The group of the study was determined by purposive sampling, and 221 dreams that 115 university students had recently and that were not repetitive (it was emphasized that dreams were...
A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer becomes aware of the fact that they are experiencing a dream. The higher awareness and cognitive traits which accompany lucid dreams offer individuals a unique opportunity to use this practice to rehearse waking skills. This scoping review aimed to summarise existing evidence on the effectiveness of lucid dreaming practice (LDP) on the...
Imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) is an evidence-based treatment for nightmare disorder (ND), and numerous studies have demonstrated its ef fi cacy in reducing the frequency and severity of nightmares. ND and REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) co-occur, yet the impact of successful treatment of nightmares on dream enactment in RBD has not been studied. In this case study, we present the treatment...
A previous study in military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and recurrent nightmares found a high prevalence of lucid dreaming (LD), the awareness while a dream continues that one is dreaming, and an "LD profile" characterized by frequent dream awareness and rare dream content control. Given the importance of the nightmare disturbance in PTSD, this study assessed with...
A previous study in military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and recurrent nightmares found a high prevalence of lucid dreaming (LD), the awareness while a dream continues that one is dreaming, and an “LD profile” characterized by frequent dream awareness and rare dream content control. Given the importance of the nightmare disturbance in PTSD, this study assessed with...
Erotic dreams are common, but the ways in which they reflect waking day romantic relationships remain understudied. We examined the targets of erotic dreams reported by 470 men and 575 women in a romantic relationship as well as the associations between these targets and measures of couple and sexual life. Over 95% of all participants reported having erotic dreams. Women were more likely than...
This study analyzes the responses of 3,031 U S adults who, in early May of 2020, completed an online survey regarding their dreams and the COVID-19 outbreak The results indicate that those people most strongly affected by the pandemic also reported the strongest effects on their dream life (heightened dream recall, more negatively toned dreams, and pandemic-related dreams) Pronounced negative...
Based on the continuity hypothesis of dreaming with waking life, we have studied the effects of isolation on the dreams of Italian persons, during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic The present study included a sample of 796 subjects (73 2% women;ages 18-79 years, M = 30 3, SD = 12 8) Participants were asked to complete a dream questionnaire, as well as to report their most recent dream, by...
This article assesses the neurocognitive theory of dreams on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. The theory synthesizes findings from 3 strands of dream research, which focus respectively on the neural substrate that subserves dreaming, the development of dreaming in children, and quantitative findings on adult dream content, all 3 of which are necessary ingredients in any theory in cognitive...
DreamingMarch 1, 2019Carlo Lai, Giada Lucarelli, G. Pellicano et al.
The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of dream recall on the neurophysiological correlates of emotional processing. The hypothesis was that dream recall will produce an increased activation of fronto-limbic areas during an emotional task. Thirty-seven women were recruited and randomly assigned to two groups. Both groups were exposed to a visual task with emotional images (positive...
Using 2 texts that survey the most prevalent current Western Euro-based dreamwork modalities, this qualitative analysis identifies common factors in dreamwork techniques. The results show a clear movement toward experiential and collaborative methods and away from interpretation by the dreamworker. The study found general agreement about the main dreamwork practices among the 14 approaches...
This research addressed the question of why some bereaved individuals dream of the deceased whereas others do not. Two studies were conducted. In one, participants were 268 U.S. residents (150 men, 116 women, 1 other, and 1 undisclosed), with an age range of 20 to 70 (M = 33.8), who had lost a romantic partner or spouse in the previous 12 to 24 months. The second study had 162 U.S. residents...
The current study examined the validity of the Nightmare Proneness Scale (NPS; Kelly, 2018) as measuring a personality disposition that predisposes individuals to experience frequent nightmares. The NPS and measures to estimate its convergent and discriminant validity were administered to a sample of 140 university students. The convergent validity of the scale was supported through significant...
This qualitative study of patients’ dreams in analytical psychotherapy using the method of Structural Dream Analysis investigated 15 cases and 202 dreams. In total, 5 major dream patterns were identified and that accounted for the majority of the dreams. The clients’ dream series were dominated by 1 or 2 repetitive patterns, which were closely connected to the psychological problems of the...
This article reports the findings of a new exercise in the “blind analysis” of a long dream series. The study focused on 940 dreams of a woman (“Beverly”) who kept a regular dream journal for 30 years. Four subsets of her dreams (from 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016) were analyzed using a digital word search template, and then predictions were made about Beverly’s waking life based on the word usage...
This article reports the first systematic study on lucid nightmares—terrifying lucid dreams with a lack of dream control. An online survey was completed by 634 participants, of whom 574 had had previous lucid dream experience. According to the reports of lucid dreamers, less than half of them had experienced a lucid nightmare, and only 1% of them could be considered as suffering from lucid...
We pilot tested the efficacy of a virtual reality-based imagery rehearsal and rescripting treatment (ReScript) for nightmares. Nineteen community volunteers (Mage = 49 years) who varied in terms of their nightmare distress levels participated in a 4-week-long trial of ReScript therapy. Participants used VR manual controls in an Oculus headset to manipulate 3 scary or threatening images per...
The present study is a comparison of dream content between monks and nonreligious respondents, aiming to understand the unconscious of monks, and to further explore the influence of religion on our human mind. The authors interviewed participants to collect dreams and then explored similarities and differences through content analysis. A total of 127 participants reported their dreams, 65 monks...