Theory Of Dreaming: Scenario builder
Jewelle Mhae
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) October 31, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23837147 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key points | Proposes that a single scenario-building system operates both during waking daydreaming and during sleep, and that frequent, vivid daydreaming may function as practice that strengthens visualization and increases dream immersion without necessarily increasing dream frequency. The author allows an alternative explanation, that daydreaming simply reflects an imaginative, active mind, and describes the framework as an untested hypothesis. |
Abstract
Your original contribution The Scenario Builder: A Theoretical Framework Linking Daydreaming and Dream Immersion is a conceptual hypothesis by Jewelle Ballesteros. It proposes that the brain has no true off switch: the same scenario-building system that produces spontaneous thoughts, questions, and daydreams during the day keeps running during sleep, where it combines memories, emotions, stress, and random neural activity into immersive dreams. Dreaming is described as this system running without full conscious control. The paper’s original proposal is that frequent, vivid daydreaming works like practice, strengthening the brain’s ability to visualize and making dreams feel more realistic or immersive, even if daydreamers do not dream more often. It also considers that daydreaming may simply reflect an imaginative, active mind, and it allows for both explanations. The framework also addresses nightmares, stress, and lucid dreaming, and it connects these ideas to existing research on dreaming and mind-wandering. This is an untested theoretical hypothesis, not a peer-reviewed study. No experiment was run and no new data are reported. The paper proposes a future study and says what result would count against the theory.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |