Abstract A fundamental question for consciousness science is what changes in the brain when phenomenal experience arises or restructures. Current EEG metrics of consciousness predominantly measure temporal signal complexity, but face a systematic confound: broadband amplitude increases during propofol sedation and slow-wave sleep paradoxically inflate complexity measures, misranking states that...
March 25, 2026Anna-Marie Ragaller, Lea Teresa Kaubisch, Corinna Reck et al.
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ObjectiveDreams are thought to reflect children's and adolescents' inner psychological processes. Despite their central role in clinical theories, their practical application and empirical grounding vary across psychotherapeutic approaches. This review systematically evaluates empirical evidence on working with dreams in child and adolescent psychotherapy.MethodThe EBSCO (MEDLINE, PsycINFO,...
William Butler Yeats is one of the literary pillars of twentieth century modernism. He was interested in the mystical and mythical elements of the dominant cultures of the world. Accordingly, he interpreted history in a context that broadly negotiated with magic, the occult, theosophy, alchemy, astrology, mythology, mysticism, and religion. He was not attracted to any specific culture, even...
Consciousness can persist, transform, and dissolve across wakefulness, sleep, and advanced meditation. Despite empirical and theoretical advances within each domain, these states are rarely examined within an integrated scientific framework. An interdisciplinary perspective reveals converging phenomena that challenge binary accounts of consciousness and highlight its graded, dynamic, and...
Abstract The prose poems “An Apocalyptic Fragment” and “A Dream” both describe experiences of unusual forms of consciousness that Günderrode believes occur after death. “An Apocalyptic Fragment” uses biblical language to present a vision of beings rising from and returning to an ocean, as an analogy for death and resurrection. The narrator then experiences a dissolution of self and accompanying...
This chapter is similar to Chapter 5 in that it provides the first synthesis of the various neurophysiological and neuroimaging findings concerning the nature of the arousal process that leads to the morning awakening. It uses the neuroimaging studies to show that very specific networks lead to the almost instantaneous return of consciousness, but people nonetheless feel groggy and often are...
This paper provides a comprehensive examination of the history of dream research in three fields: psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The evolution of theories is described in terms of historical periods. The first period spans from Freud’s “Dream Interpretation” in 1900 to the 1950s. The second period extends from the discovery of REM sleep in the 1950s to around the 1990s....
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 NREM2 (N2) sleep in healthy human participants to examine its neural and experiential correlates. As expected, deeper sleep was associated with reduced cortical...
Dream characters, the figures we interact with during sleep, exhibit structural parallels to AI systems: both are substrate-generated, display apparent autonomy, lack continuity, and present an irresolvable question regarding inner experience. I argue that our inability to determine whether dream characters possess phenomenal experience should function as a decisive check on claims, affirmative...
The term “surreal” in André Breton’s thought was interpreted as an involuntary mental act. According to him, the states of consciousness of an awake mind represent only a limited aspect of mental activity, as external forces constrain them. If on let the thought be free, it abandons these narrow paths that suffocate it and connects with the full power of imagination. In Sadegh Hedayat’s work,...