Dreaming and episodic memory: a functional dissociation?
Magdalena J Fosse, Roar Fosse, J Allan Hobson, Robert Stickgold
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2003 DOI: 10.1162/089892903321107774 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 29 |
| Population | Subjects who kept logs of daytime activities and dreams |
| Duration | 14 days |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key findings | Episodic replay of waking events occurred in only 1-2% of dream reports, while 65% of sleep mentation reports reflected aspects of recent waking life. |
Abstract
The activity that takes place in memory systems during sleep is likely to be related to the role of sleep in memory consolidation and learning, as well as to the generation of dream hallucinations. This study addressed the often-stated hypothesis that replay of whole episodic memories contributes to the multimodal hallucinations of sleep. Over a period of 14 days, 29 subjects kept a log of daytime activities, events, and concerns, wrote down any recalled dreams, and scored the dreams for incorporation of any waking experiences. While 65% of a total of 299 sleep mentation reports were judged to reflect aspects of recent waking life experiences, the episodic replay of waking events was found in no more than 1-2% of the dream reports. This finding has implications for understanding the unique memory processing that takes place during the night and is consistent with evidence that sleep has no role in episodic memory consolidation.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming Student volunteers trained to become lucid and signal lucidity with horizontal eye... | 2009 | Observational study | n = 6 |
| Nightmare Prevalence, Nightmare Distress, and Self-Reported Psychological Disturbance Young adults with a mean age of 20 years | 2002 | Prospective observational study | n = 116 |
| Long-term effects of extreme situational stress on sleep and dreaming Survivors of traumatic events who complained of sleep disturbances, compared with... | 1987 | Case-control study | n = 11 |
| The relationship of nightmare frequency and nightmare distress to well‐being Adults who reported dreams | 2004 | Observational cohort | n = 147 |
| Dreaming in NREM Sleep: A High-Density EEG Study of Slow Waves and Spindles Healthy human subjects | 2018 | Observational cohort | n = 14 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 109
- Dreaming as mind wandering: evidence from functional neuroimaging and first-person content reports. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013
- Graph analysis of dream reports is especially informative about psychosis Scientific Reports January 15, 2014
- The relationship between awareness and attention: evidence from ERP responses. Neuropsychologia November 1, 2009
- Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming Frontiers in Psychology August 18, 2015
- Sleep and dreaming are for important matters Frontiers in Psychology 2013
and 104 more in the library
Cites 8
- Cognitive Aspects of Mental Activity during Sleep The American Journal of Psychology 1991
- Incorporation of presleep stimuli into dream contents: evidence for a consolidation effect on declarative knowledge during REM sleep? Journal of Sleep Research December 1, 2004
- Are life episodes replayed during dreaming? Trends in Cognitive Sciences August 1, 2003
- Sleep, learning, and dreams: off-line memory reprocessing. Science November 2, 2001
- Memory sources associated with REM and NREM dream reports throughout the night: a new look at the data. Sleep March 1, 2001
and 3 more in the library