Lucid Dreaming, a unique state of consciousness whilst asleep where dreamers can engage in volitional actions not limited by the constraints of the physical world and control their dream contents, offers various mental and physical health benefits. Current research combining multiple lucid dreaming induction techniques is often conducted in a lab setting, lacking autonomy by relying on...
Lucid dreaming, characterized by an awareness of being in a dream, offers individuals the ability to control dream content, which leads to various benefits such as entertainment, improved mental well-being, reduced concurrent nightmares, skills enhancement, creative inspiration, and problem-solving. However, manipulating dream content can be challenging and even experienced lucid dreamers may...
Background: Clinical case illustrations of patients with an impairment of personality functioning (IPF) have repeatedly reported that progress during psychotherapy is reflected by alterations in dream content. However, quantitative studies based on samples of psychotherapy patients are scarce. As a core component of both personality functioning and contemporary psychodynamic dream theory, the...
Sleepwalking and related parasomnias result from incomplete awakenings out of non-rapid eye movement sleep. Behavioral episodes can occur without consciousness or recollection, or in relation to dream-like experiences. To understand what accounts for these differences in consciousness and recall, here we recorded parasomnia episodes with high-density electroencephalography (EEG) and interviewed...
ABSTRACT The author proposes ways of rethinking the concepts of the unconscious and time in the analytic setting, including the very existence of the unconscious. Freud (1915) stated that the success psychoanalytic thinking has in making inferences about the patient’s unconscious makes the existence of the unconscious “incontrovertible.” The author submits that this success does not establish...
Lucid dreaming is a state in which individuals become aware that they are dreaming, allowing dreamers to actively engage in controlling their dream content and transcending the limitations of the physical world. Lucid dreaming offers various mental and physical health benefits. However, current research combining multiple lucid dreaming induction techniques is often conducted with the...
Perceptual reality monitoring refers to the ability to distinguish internally triggered imagination from externally triggered reality. Such monitoring can take place at perceptual or cognitive levels-for example, in lucid dreaming, perceptual experience feels real but is accompanied by a cognitive insight that it is not real. We recently developed a paradigm to reveal perceptual reality...
Summary Sleep is a universal, essential biological process. It is also an invaluable window on consciousness. It tells us that consciousness can be lost, but also that it can be regained, in all its richness, when we are disconnected from the environment and unable to reflect By considering neurophysiological differences between dreaming and dreamless sleep, we can learn about the substrate of...
Spontaneous thoughts, such as dreaming and mind wandering, constitute a significant portion of human consciousness. Yet, the precise phenomenological and content-related similarities and differences between dreaming and waking mind wandering remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we address this gap by comparing 340 dreaming and mind wandering questionnaires that depending on the...
The relationship between sensory stimuli and perceptions is brain-state dependent: in wakefulness, suprathreshold stimuli evoke perceptions; under anesthesia, perceptions are abolished; and during dreaming and in dissociated states, percepts are internally generated. Here, we exploit this state dependence to identify brain activity associated with internally generated or stimulus-evoked...