University Library Heidelberg
April 28, 2026
Rolf Scheuermann
The climate crisis is arguably one of today’s greatest challenges and the Buddhist doctrine offers a foundation for a comprehensive approach to environmental activism, grounded in core principles such as mindfulness, compassion, and dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda). Consequently, many Buddhists have turned to environmental activism, trying to find their own ways of expression. This...
University Library Heidelberg
March 10, 2026
Xinlin Wang, Johanna Heitmann, Lorenzo de Neri et al.
Lucid dreaming refers to a dream state in which the dreamers are aware that they are dreaming and may be able to intentionally influence the dream content. Previous studies have shown that lucid dreaming provides a useful model for investigating cognitive processes during dreaming and may also have potential therapeutic applications. However, reliable methods for inducing lucid dreams are still...
University Library Heidelberg
January 26, 2026
Michael Schredl, Anja S. Göritz
The continuity hypothesis of dreaming states that dreams reflect waking life, however, research has also shown that dreams can affect waking life, e.g., creativity, daytime mood. So far, factors that are associated with the effect of dreams on waking life have been rarely studied. Overall, 2492 persons (1437 woman, 1055 men) with a mean age of 47.75 ± 14.41 years participated in the study. The...
University Library Heidelberg
December 29, 2025
Reean Jyka Purisima Corral
Lucid dreaming (LD), sleep paralysis (SP), and false awakenings (FA) are liminal sleep phenomena that are often studied independently, despite evidence suggesting that they may arise from overlapping states of consciousness. Within Filipino cultural contexts, such experiences are frequently interpreted through folklore and superstition, such as bangungot, rather than through scientific or...
University Library Heidelberg
November 26, 2025
Bshar Samir Bdoor
In this essay, dream reports of the author’s dream diary were probed for their temporal aspects regarding dream production and experience. Three different general inferences were drawn from the dream contents: (a) Dreams are produced and experienced in real-time. (b) Dreams are produced in advance, saved and experienced later. (c) Dreaming is constant, being aware of it is variable. There was...
University Library Heidelberg
August 13, 2025
Laura Roklicer
This study examined how lucid dreaming (LD) can be used for fiction writing during an 8-week intervention with 29 writers of varied LD experience. Participants received LD induction training and drew on lucid, non-lucid, and hypnagogic/hypnopompic dreams to produce a short story. Quantitative analysis compared blind ratings of pre- and post-intervention short stories across five creativity...
University Library Heidelberg
April 1, 2025
Ian C. Dunican, Hailey Meaklim, Mitchell Turner et al.
Objective: Up to 40% of adults report poor sleep quality, yet research investigating the role of nightmares on sleep quality is limited. This study aimed to characterise the prevalence of disturbing dreams and nightmares and their relationship to poor sleep quality. Method: 439 adults (310 females, Mage=44.9 years) completed an online survey investigating sleep, dreams, nightmares, and mental...
University Library Heidelberg
December 14, 2024
Ayush Srivastava
In this paper, I will explore the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dream yoga as a means of improving mental well-being through lucid dreaming. It discusses the psychological and spiritual benefits, including emotional regulation, reduced nightmares, enhanced creativity, and some difficulties with maintaining lucidity and cultural considerations involved. Key questions addressed include- ‘In what...
University Library Heidelberg
January 14, 2021
Michael Schredl
The continuity hypothesis of dreaming postulates that dreams reflect waking life, e.g. preoccupations, experiences, thoughts; however, other topics like seasonal changes have been studied very rarely. A long dream series recorded between 1984 and 2015 (over 30 years) including 11,808 dreams showed that “cold” elements like snow, ice, and hail occurred less often over time and, thus, indicates...
University Library Heidelberg
July 3, 2020
Santa Parrello, Massimiliano Sommantico, Marina Lacatena et al.
18 citations
Based on the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, we have studied the effects of quarantine/isolation on the dreams of Italian adolescents during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. A sample of 235 subjects (73.2% girls; ages 12-18 years, M = 16.08, SD = 1.7) was involved. Participants were asked to complete the MADRE Questionnaire, as well as to report their Most Recent Dream by responding to...
University Library Heidelberg
May 30, 2020
Michael Schredl, Maria Gilles, Isabell Wolf et al.
2 citations
Dream recall frequencies exhibit large inter-individual differences, ranging from recalling a dream almost every morning to recalling a dream almost never. Although dream recall has been conceptualized as a stable trait, longitudinal studies in this area are scarce. Within the framework of a complex study, 279 women (mean age: 31.76 ± 4.73 yrs.) completed a brief sleep questionnaire three times...
University Library Heidelberg
February 23, 2020
Michael Raduga
5 citations
Most people experience lucid dreams (LDs), which are dreams in which the dreamer is conscious and able to perceive vivid perceptions. There are many ways to induce LDs, but their levels of efficiency are far from satisfactory. In this study, we analyze the efficiency of an LD method that was tested in commercial events with hundreds of groups over 12 years. The main feature of the method is...
University Library Heidelberg
May 23, 2019
Michael Schredl, Louisa Holyba, Tina Köllmer et al.
12 citations
The diagnosis of a nightmare disorder is based on clinically significant distress caused by the nightmares and, therefore, empirical research should focus on studying factors that affect nightmare distress in addition to nightmare frequency. Overall, 2056 persons (1212 woman, 844 men) completed the online survey. A reliable 6-item scale measuring beliefs about nightmares was developed. The...
University Library Heidelberg
June 26, 2018
Patrick Mcnamara, Kelly Duffy-Deno, Tom Marsh et al.
11 citations
We developed a dream content analysis system (DCAS) based on an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that was trained using a relatively large corpus of over 35,000 dreams. This sample of dreams were supplied by 424 female and 211 male users over 4 years who had posted them at the dream posting website and app Dreamboard.com. Building upon previous dream content ontologies developed by Hall,...
University Library Heidelberg
2016
Gregory Scott Sparrow, Ralph Carlson, Ryan Hurd
8 citations
A group of 18 experienced lucid dreamers responded to a 27-item online questionnaire pertaining to their use of the supplement galantamine for the purpose of inducing dreams. The questionnaire included 14 items that assessed the perceived differences on dimensions of dream phenomenology between lucid dreams immediately preceded by the ingestion of galantamine, and lucid dreams that were not....
University Library Heidelberg
2015
Mariella Zunker, Hanna Katharina Althoff, Julia Apel et al.
21 citations
Studies investigating the prevalence of nightmares have generally found higher frequencies in studies using daily logbooks or diaries compared to retrospective reports, raising the question as to whether retrospective questionnaires lead to an underestimation of nightmare frequency, possibly due to the suppression of the frightening nightmare experience or if the diary enhances recall. In this...
University Library Heidelberg
2014
Joacim F. Skancke, Ingrid Holsen, Michael Schredl
24 citations
Despite positive results from the use of dreams in psychotherapy and for personal growth, research regarding the relationship between waking life and dreams of patients with mental disorders is relatively scarce. The present paper reviews the existing literature on dreams of psychiatric patients in order to identify the continuities and discontinuities between the dreams and the waking life...
University Library Heidelberg
2014
Simon Kern, Amelie Auer, Melanie Gutsche et al.
15 citations
There have been many studies which show that waking life is mirrored in dream content. In a previous study, the relation between time spent on sports related tasks and sport dreams has been shown where that sports students dream more often of sports than psychology students. In this study the aim was to test whether this trend is also true for students of politics and if the time spent in...
University Library Heidelberg
2013
Michael Schredl
44 citations
Nightmares are defined as dreams with strong negative emotions that result in awakening. Overall, the findings of the present representative survey (N = 915) indicate that nightmare frequency decrease with age and living in urban areas are associated with heightened nightmare frequency. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify how age affects nightmare frequency because the findings of...
University Library Heidelberg
2013
Jennifer D. Parker, Kayleigh Freer, Kate Adams
1 citation
Using a mixed methods approach, this study investigates whether the content of dreams reported by 7 to 8 year olds differs significantly from those of 9 to 11 year olds. Nineteen children in the south west of England completed dream diaries at home for 14 days. The data were coded using Hall and Van de Castle’s (1966) Dream Content Analysis. The results demonstrate that despite a small sample...
University Library Heidelberg
2011
Giorgio Buzzi
20 citations
The results of a web-survey aimed at analyzing the phenomenology of False Awakenings (FAs) (sleep-related experiences in which the subjects erroneously believe that they have woken up, only to discover subsequently that the apparent awakening was part of a dream) were revised in light of Hobson’s recent dream protoconsciousness theory. A web-questionnaire had been previously submitted to three...
University Library Heidelberg
2011
Tadas Stumbrys
14 citations
The notions of continuity and discontinuity are discussed in relation to the phenomenon of lucid dreaming (awareness of dreaming while dreaming). Lucid dreams seem to be more dreamlike than non-lucid dreams both in terms of their content and REM sleep physiology and therefore are more discontinuous with our waking experience. They also seem to represent some “crack” – discontinuity – in the...
University Library Heidelberg
2009
Amy Ruth Parke, Caroline L. Horton
1 citation
The interference hypothesis (Cohen, 1974; Cohen & Wolfe, 1973) was proposed to account for the difficulties in remembering dreams. Stimuli perceived on waking can either encourage activation of the waking brain or impair the transition from sleep to wake. The objective of the present study was to assess the validity of the interference hypothesis by discriminating between the natural decay of...