Abstract
The study of dreams represents a crucial intersection between philosophical, psychological, neuroscientific, and clinical interests. Importantly, one of the main sources of insight into dreaming activity are the (oral or written) reports provided by dreamers upon awakening from their sleep. Classically, two main types of information are commonly extracted from dream reports: structural and semantic, content-related information. Extracted structural information is typically limited to the simple count of words or sentences in a report. Instead, content analysis usually relies on quantitative scores assigned by two or more (blind) human operators through the use of predefined coding systems. Within this review, we will show that methods borrowed from the field of linguistic analysis, such as graph analysis, dictionary-based content analysis, and distributional semantics approaches, could be used to complement and, in many cases, replace classical measures and scales for the quantitative structural and semantic assessment of dream reports. Importantly, these methods allow the direct (operator-independent) extraction of quantitative information from language data, hence enabling a fully objective and reproducible analysis of conscious experiences occurring during human sleep. Most importantly, these approaches can be partially or fully automatized and may thus be easily applied to the analysis of large datasets.
Highlights
Every night, when we fall asleep, we cease to experience the world around us
Increased graph connectedness in REM dream reports as compared to NREM dream reports No difference in graph connectedness between pandemic and non-pandemic dreams
Graph analysis of dream reports found extensive application in the study of possible differences between clinical populations and healthy individuals. This interest was motivated by the fact that speech disorganization characterizes in particular formal thought disorder (FTD), that is “any impairment in the production of language and subjective alteration in the thought process” [34], affecting the form rather than the content of thinking
Summary
During all stages of sleep, we may be exposed to a wide gamut of internally generated experiences (i.e., dreams), ranging from simple abstract thoughts to complex movie-like narratives. With rare exceptions, these experiences develop independently from external stimuli and are not subject to voluntary control [1]. Dreams are thought to represent an important window on—and to potentially have a direct role in—sleep-dependent processes involving learning and memory consolidation [4,5]. It is clear that the study of dreams represents a crucial intersection between philosophical, psychological, neuroscientific, and clinical interests
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
