Abstract Jean-Paul Sartre develops a phenomenological account of dreaming in his early work on the imaginary. Providing a brief but rich analysis, he emphasizes the active and imaginative nature of consciousness during dreaming and distinguished it sharply from perception. This paper revisits Sartre’s dream theory in light of the neuroscientific and philosophical framework of Predictive...
Why should we be interested in the relationship between dreaming and memory?Dreaming and Memory: Philosophical Issues sets out to explore this issue, offering rigorous and thought-provoking investigations into how these two phenomena might illuminate one another.Bringing together a range of philosophical perspectives, the volume navigates the blurred boundaries of these two cognitive...
Nightmares are associated with psychopathological symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of nightmares and heterogeneity of nightmare distress and examine the association between nightmares and mental health problems with a broader sample of Chinese college students. A total of 5,824 college students were assessed in our study. Participants completed a self-reported...
Journal of Sleep ResearchOctober 1, 2025Maïlis Charpentier-Hélary, Aurélien De la Chapelle, Maxime Linard et al.
Epilepsy impacts cognition during wakefulness. As epileptic activity is present and even augmented during sleep, epilepsy could also influence sleep-related cognitive processes. However, whether epilepsy modulates sleep-related experiences like dreaming remains poorly known. Here, we prospectively investigated the characteristics and determinants of dreaming in patients with epilepsy....
Abstract: This article explores ways to reconcile paradoxes of embodiment in Śaṅkara’s doctrine of liberation-while-living ( jīvanmukti ) by exploring its parallels with lucid dreaming. I engage in lucid dreaming as a thought experiment in which a lucid dreamer could feasibly reflect on dream experience through an Advaita Vedāntic philosophical lens. If approached this way, lucid dreaming...
Abstract Patients undergoing general anesthesia are often assumed to be unconscious. However, it is known that conscious experiences in the form of dreams occur even in unresponsive states induced by anesthetics. Here, we recorded resting state electroencephalography (EEG) as well as EEG combined with TMS perturbations in 20 healthy participants during propofol sedation. Participants were...
Reactivation of waking neuronal activity during sleep holds a functional role in memory consolidation. Reprocessing of daytime memory in dreams might aid later memory performance in a similar way. Numerous findings hint at a link between dreaming and sleep-dependent memory processing; however, studies investigating day-residue incorporation in dreaming led to mixed results so far. In this...
Training and consultation in cognitive behavioral therapy for nightmares (CBT-N) were introduced for Veterans Health Administration (VHA) providers to reduce the frequency and severity of nightmares and improve functioning of veterans experiencing chronic nightmares. This study aimed to evaluate providers' sustained delivery of CBT-N and their perceptions of benefits and barriers to...
Despite extensive discussions, a consensus is lacking on whether out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and lucid dreams (LDs) should be considered as distinct categories of experience, and if so, what differentiates them. To address this issue, we first discussed the implications of OBEs and LDs as the same type of phenomenon. We then compiled a comprehensive list of experiential features associated...
Background: REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is characterized by loss of normal muscle atonia during REM sleep, often associated with dream enactment behaviors, and is typically a prodromal neurodegenerative condition in middle-aged and older adults. However, emerging case reports and case series suggest that not all RBD presentations follow this trajectory, particularly in younger...
Perceived sleep depth is a key determinant of subjective sleep quality, traditionally thought to reflect unconsciousness and reduced cortical activation. Here, we combined high-density EEG with a serial awakening paradigm during NREM sleep to examine its neural and experiential correlates. As expected, deeper sleep was associated with reduced cortical activation, reflected in a lower...
Study objectives: Patients with acute trauma are vulnerable to suicidality following hospitalization. Research suggests nightmares and insomnia may interact to potentiate suicidality, possibly due to nightmares worsening co-occurring insomnia. Nightmares and insomnia are common stress reactions to acute trauma and might compound suicide risk within acutely traumatized patients. We tested the...
The basic definition of lucid dreaming is that the dreamer knows that s/he is dreaming while still dreaming. However, the skills within the lucid dream, e.g., regarding dream control, vary considerably from dreamer to dreamer. The present study tested the psychometric properties of the Lucid Dreaming Skills Questionnaire (LUSK) in a sample of 1267 persons. The findings indicate that the LUSK...
Can active inference model consciousness? We offer three conditions implying that it can. The first condition is the simulation of a world model, which determines what can be known or acted upon; namely an epistemic field. The second is inferential competition to enter the world model. Only the inferences that coherently reduce long-term uncertainty win, evincing a selection for consciousness...
Having nightmares can contribute to poor sleep quality, and having sleep problems can be accompanied by increased nightmare frequency. The etiological models of insomnia and nightmare disorder also show some parallels. The present cross-sectional study included 654 participants (509 women, 144 men, 1 non-binary) with mild to moderate sleep problems (mean age: 41.19 ± 12.95 years). As expected,...
Patients with REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) enact their dreams, leading to enhanced dream recall. They report more negative emotions in their dreams, recall retrospective nightmares more frequently, and often experience more aggressive dreams. This study aims to understand dream characteristics in REM sleep behavior disorder using both retrospective and prospective measures in a controlled...
Lucid dreaming (LD), during which the dreamer becomes aware of the dream state, offers a unique opportunity for a variety of applications, including motor practice, personal well-being, and nightmare therapy. However, these applications largely depend on the dreamer's ability to control their dreams. While LD research has traditionally focused on induction techniques to increase dream...
Lucid dreaming, defined as the experience of becoming aware of dreaming while still immersed in a dream, offers a unique window into a state of consciousness characterized 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...
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...