Journal of Sleep Research
August 1, 2026
Nicola De Pisapia, Erdem Taskiran, Stefano Mastino et al.
Lucid dreaming, defined as the experience of becoming aware of dreaming while dreaming, offers a unique window into a state of consciousness characterised by a blending of the sensory vividness of REM sleep with the self-awareness of wakefulness. While past functional imaging has shed light on the neural activity supporting lucid dreaming, the structural brain correlates of lucid dream...
British Journal of Anaesthesia
August 1, 2026
Pilleriin Sikka, Sherry Hu, Boris D. Heifets
Dreaming during anaesthesia has been documented for over a century, yet it remains poorly understood. This scoping review synthesises evidence on the frequency, phenomenology, predictors, outcomes, and neural correlates of anaesthesia dreaming. We systematically searched multiple databases for studies examining anaesthesia dreaming, including clinical trials, observational studies, and...
Prog Brain Res
July 14, 2026
Neuroanatomy of dreaming and REM phenomenology.
Journal of Mood and Anxiety Disorders
July 10, 2026
Ashby Boland, Lauren D Reyes, Jenny Black et al.
Nightmares are common after sexual assault and may play an important role in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, little research has examined daily temporal associations between nightmares and PTSD symptoms in the acute aftermath of sexual assault. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) was used to test within- and between-person associations between nightmares and...
arXiv (Cornell University)
July 10, 2026
Ren Takahashi, Emre Yusuf, Jayabrata Bhaduri
Current electroencephalography (EEG)-based dream detection relies on power spectral density (PSD) and statistical moment features, achieving a state-of-the-art area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of approximately 0.70 on the DREAM database (Wong et al., 2025, Nature Communications). We introduce PHINN-EEG (Persistent Homology Inspired Neural Network for EEG), the first...
PsyArXiv Preprints
July 10, 2026
Dreaming is a universal phenomenon, yet the ability to recall dream content varies among individuals and most dreams are forgotten quickly after waking up. Such dream amnesia seems paradoxical given the proposed adaptive functions of dreaming. It has been theorized that dream amnesia might serve an evolutionary adaptive function, protecting against cognitive disruptions such as dream-reality...
Open Access at Essex
July 9, 2026
Camila Bottger Garcia Godos
The aim of this study was to determine if induced dissociative states impacts memory function and sleep. We induced dissociative states by using the Mirror Gazing Task (MGT), an effective method of eliciting altered states and anomalous experiences, similar to those experienced in individuals with depersonalization-derealization disorder, in controlled settings in non-clinical samples of...
SLEEP Advances
July 8, 2026
Emma Peters, Xinlin Wang, Johanna Heitmann et al.
Abstract Study Objectives Sensory stimulation during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has been proposed as a method to induce lucidity, yet most approaches rely on distal sensory modalities such as light and sound. We explored whether bodily stimulation targeting the muscle and vestibular systems differentially influences dream incorporation and lucid awareness during REM sleep. Methods 28...
Sleep Medicine
July 2, 2026
Emilie Gagneron, Katayoun Rezaei, Romain Perot et al.
Suicide is a major public health concern, and identifying early indicators of suicidal crisis remains a key clinical challenge. Nightmares have been suggested as potential early markers of suicide risk. This study aimed to investigate dream alterations preceding a suicidal crisis in patients presenting to a psychiatric emergency department. This prospective study was conducted in a psychiatric...
Journal of Psychosomatic Research
May 14, 2026
Keyuan Liu, Geoffroy Solelhac, Nicola Andrea Marchi et al.
Nightmares can trigger stress responses and lead to insufficient or poor-quality sleep, which are associated with cardiometabolic diseases (CMD) and their risk factors. However, research on the association and underlying mechanisms between nightmares and CMD in the general population remains limited. Data from three follow-ups of the CoLaus|PsyCoLaus study (Lausanne, Switzerland). Frequent...
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
March 14, 2019
Benjamin Baird, Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Martin Dresler
196 citations
Lucid dreaming refers to the phenomenon of becoming aware of the fact that one is dreaming during ongoing sleep. Despite having been physiologically validated for decades, the neurobiology of lucid dreaming is still incompletely characterized. Here we review the neuroscientific literature on lucid dreaming, including electroencephalographic, neuroimaging, brain lesion, pharmacological and brain...
Journal of Sleep Research
January 29, 2019
Annika Gieselmann, Malik Ait Aoudia, Michelle Carr et al.
192 citations
This consensus paper provides an overview of the state of the art in research on the aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder and outlines further perspectives on these issues. It presents a definition of nightmares and nightmare disorder followed by epidemiological findings, and then explains existing models of nightmare aetiology in traumatized and non-traumatized individuals. Chronic...
Journal of Neuroscience
September 10, 2018
Francesca Siclari, Giulio Bernardi, Jacinthe Cataldi et al.
148 citations
Dreaming can occur in both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep. We recently showed that in both REM and NREM sleep, dreaming is associated with local decreases in slow wave activity (SWA) in posterior brain regions. To expand these findings, here we asked how specific features of slow waves and spindles, the hallmarks of NREM sleep, relate to dream experiences. Fourteen healthy...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
January 22, 2018
Camila Sanz, Federico Zamberlán, Earth Erowid et al.
112 citations
Ever since the modern rediscovery of psychedelic substances by Western society, several authors have independently proposed that their effects bear a high resemblance to the dreams and dreamlike experiences occurring naturally during the sleep-wake cycle. Recent studies in humans have provided neurophysiological evidence supporting this hypothesis. However, a rigorous comparative analysis of...
Choice Reviews Online
January 20, 2016
121 citations
Dreams, conceived as conscious experience or phenomenal states during sleep, offer an important contrast condition for theories of consciousness and the self. Yet, although there is a wealth of empirical research on sleep and dreaming, its potential contribution to consciousness research and philosophy of mind is largely overlooked. This might be due, in part, to a lack of conceptual clarity...
Sleep
February 27, 2015
Pauline Dodet, Mario Chávez, Smaranda Leu-Semenescu et al.
115 citations
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. SETTINGS: University hospital sleep disorder unit. DESIGN: Case-control study. PARTICIPANTS: Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. METHODS: Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5...
Neuroimage
June 25, 2014
Aaron Kucyi, Karen D. Davis
381 citations
Humans spend much of their time engaged in stimulus-independent thoughts, colloquially known as "daydreaming" or "mind-wandering." A fundamental question concerns how awake, spontaneous brain activity represents the ongoing cognition of daydreaming versus unconscious processes characterized as "intrinsic." Since daydreaming involves brief cognitive events that spontaneously fluctuate, we tested...
The American Journal of Psychology
April 21, 2014
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Miriam Johnson et al.
104 citations
In lucid dreams the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. Although such dreams are not that uncommon, many aspects of lucid dream phenomenology are still unclear. An online survey was conducted to gather data about lucid dream origination, duration, active or passive participation in the dream, planned actions for lucid dreams, and other phenomenological aspects. Among the 684...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Kieran C. R. Fox, Savannah Nijeboer, Elizaveta Solomonova et al.
297 citations
Isolated reports have long suggested a similarity in content and thought processes across mind wandering (MW) during waking, and dream mentation during sleep. This overlap has encouraged speculation that both "daydreaming" and dreaming may engage similar brain mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we systematically examined published first-person experiential reports of MW and dreaming and...
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
February 18, 2010
Antonio Zadra, Robert O. Pihl
120 citations
BACKGROUND: Lucid dreams occur when a person becomes aware that he or she is dreaming while still in the dream state. Previous reports on the use of lucid dreaming in the treatment of nightmares do not contain adequate baseline data, follow-up data, or both. METHODS: A treatment of recurrent nightmares incorporating progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, and lucid dream induction is...
Sleep
September 1, 2009
Ursula Voss, R. Holzmann, Inka Tuin et al.
443 citations
STUDY OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study was to seek physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a dissociated state with aspects of waking and dreaming combined in a way so as to suggest a specific alteration in brain physiology for which we now present preliminary but intriguing evidence. We show that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like...
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
2006
Victor I. Spoormaker, Jan Van den Bout
155 citations
BACKGROUND: The goal of this pilot study was to evaluate the effects of the cognitive-restructuring technique 'lucid dreaming treatment' (LDT) on chronic nightmares. Becoming lucid (realizing that one is dreaming) during a nightmare allows one to alter the nightmare storyline during the nightmare itself. METHODS: After having filled out a sleep and a posttraumatic stress disorder questionnaire,...
Journal of Sleep Research
May 12, 2003
Michael Schredl, Lutz Wittmann, Petra Ciric et al.
147 citations
Previous research has indicated that personality factors such as openness to experience, creativity, visual memory, attitude toward dreams, and sleep behavior is related to home dream recall frequency (DRF). However, a study investigating all areas simultaneously within one sample in order to determine the percentage of variance explained by all variables and to take intercorrelations between...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1981
Stephen P. La Berge, Lynn E. Nagel, William C. Dement et al.
237 citations
SUMMARY: The occurrence of lucid dreaming (dreaming while being conscious that one is dreaming) has been verified for 5 selected subjects who signaled that they knew they were dreaming while continuing to dream during unequivocal REM sleep. The signals consisted of particular dream actions having observable concomitants and were performed in accordance with pre-sleep agreement. The ability of...