What are dreams, and how do we study them?
Routledge eBooks October 7, 2020 DOI: 10.4324/9781315516653-2 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Describes rapid eye movement sleep dreams as commonly featuring world simulation, bizarre occurrences, a narrative feel, and strong emotions, with nightmares about danger and threat appearing across cultures. Contrasts at-home dream diaries, which offer higher ecological validity, with sleep-laboratory collection, called the 'gold standard' and portrayed as more comfortable than it sounds. |
Abstract
Dreams are extremely varied and are almost always a completely unique experience. However, there are some aspects of dreams that stand out as being common across many dreams. During rapid eye movement sleep, we have our most stereotypical ‘dream-like’ dreams, with the common characteristics mentioned before, like world simulation, bizarre occurrences, a narrative feel, and strong emotions. There are some dreams which many people experience, even across different cultures. Nightmares are very unpleasant, scary dreams, which often revolve around themes of danger and threat. A method of collecting dream reports higher in ecological validity is to ask participants to record their own dreams at home. The ’gold standard’ of collecting dream reports is in a sleep laboratory, which sounds more clinical than it is; participants get their own bedroom, which we try and make as comfy and homely as possible.