Dream Recall Research Articles

Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming: A double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study.

Lucid dreaming is a remarkable state of consciousness in which one is aware of the fact that one is dreaming while continuing to dream. Based on the strong relationship between physiological activation during rapid eye-movement sleep and lucid dreaming, our pilot research investigated whether enhancing cortical activation via acetylcholinesterease inhibition (AChEI) would increase the frequency of lucid dreams and found AChEI to be a promising method for lucid dream induction. In the current study we sought to quantify the size and reliability of the effect of AChEI on lucid dreaming, dream recall and dream content as well as to test the effectiveness of an integrated lucid dream induction protocol which combined cholinergic stimulation with other methods for lucid dream induction. Participants (N = 121) with high dream recall and an interest in lucid dreaming were randomly assigned counterbalanced orders of 3 doses of galantamine (0, 4 and 8 mg). On 3 consecutive nights, they awoke approximately 4.5 hours after lights out, recalled a dream, ingested the capsules and stayed out of bed for at least 30 minutes. Participants then returned to bed and practiced the Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams technique while returning to sleep. The percentage of participants who reported a lucid dream was significantly increased for both 4 mg (27%, odds ratio = 2.29) and 8 mg doses (42%, odds ratio = 4.46) compared to the active placebo procedure (14%). Galantamine also significantly increased dream recall, sensory vividness and complexity (p<0.05). Dream recall, cognitive clarity, control, positive emotion, vividness and self-reflection were increased during lucid compared to non-lucid dreams (p<0.0001). These results show that galantamine increases the frequency of lucid dreams in a dose-related manner. Furthermore, the integrated method of taking galantamine in the last third of the night with at least 30 minutes of sleep interruption and with an appropriately focused mental set is one of the most effective methods for inducing lucid dreams available today.

A Response to James Honeycutt's article: Differences in Ecstatic Trance Postures in terms of Dream Recall, Imagined Interactions and Heart Rate

A Response to James Honeycutt's article: Differences in Ecstatic Trance Postures in terms of Dream Recall, Imagined Interactions and Heart Rate

Attachment and dream emotions: The mediating role of trait anxiety and depression

Although associations of attachment insecurity and sleep quality have gained major interest in recent literature, little attention has been given to dream content in this regard. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to examine whether a relationship exists between attachment and the emotional tone of dreams (positive vs. negative); and 2) to investigate the potential mediator role of trait anxiety and depression between attachment and dream emotions. The sample consisted of 1661 university students (68.5% male; Mage: 20.48 years). Attachment characteristics were assessed by the Relationship Scales Questionnaire, dream emotions were measured by the Dream Quality Questionnaire, while trait anxiety and depression were assessed using the Depression and Anxiety facets of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. The results indicated that attachment anxiety and attachment style (secure, preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful) were associated with both negative and positive emotions in dreams even when controlling for sociodemographics and that these relationships were mainly mediated by general anxiety and depression proneness. However, attachment avoidance was not related with either dream quality indicator and dream recall frequency was unrelated with categorical attachment style. Major limitations of the study include the low ratio of females in the sample and the use of retrospective assessment methods in the measurement of dream content and dream recall frequency. Nevertheless, the results could provide new perspectives on the role of attachment in dreaming and might suggest that the consideration of attachment could help us better understand not only attachment- but nightmare-, mood- and anxiety disorders as well.

Dreaming and REM-sleep: History of a scientific denial whose disappearance entailed a reconciliation of the neuroscience and the cognitive psychological approaches to dreaming

Since around 2010, important changes occurred in research on the neural bases of dreaming. From the 1960s until the end of the century, most sleep physiologists and some dream researchers continued to adhere to the view that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was the functional state of the brain concomitant to dreaming, in spite of numerous published findings falsifying that view. At the beginning of the 21st century only, the idea that the neural basis of dreaming is not REM sleep was accepted by a new generation of sleep physiologists. The present article firstly presents how the REM sleep hypothesis of dreaming originated in the 1950s and became the received view on the neurophysiological bases of dreaming. Secondly, five categories of counter-evidence published during the following decades are summarized. The next section recalls the long-lasting denial of the body of counter-evidence. The Discussion section starts with two cognitive topics: dream recall and the definition of dreaming. We then discuss the relationships between the neuroscience and the cognitive-psychological approaches to dreaming. The main categories of current experiments on the neural bases of dreaming are then presented. They show that giving up the received view permitted neuroscience research on dreaming to enter a new era. The last part of the article proposes an explanation of the scientific denial by the psycho-physiological reductionism of many sleep specialists of the time. The main drawbacks of a reductionism stance are listed and the article ends on a lesson to draw from this historical episode.

Measure of dream recall frequency: Comparing retrospective and logbook evaluations

Dream recall frequency (DRF) is the main indicator for evaluating dream. In home-setting, DRF can be established using two major methods: the retrospective estimation (RE) and the logbook estimation (LE). No research to date has compared DRF obtained with these two methods on the same period and using an online logbook that does not allow rereading of previous reports. We aim at investigating on these two methods by evaluating their influence on the recall frequency of dream (DRF). In the present study, the protocol consisted of online questionnaires in order to prevent rereading: an initial RE, a LE for a 21-day period, and a final RE. Both RE were based on an open-ended question about DRF on the last 21 days. Thus, the score of DRF assessed with the LE and the post-logbook RE were established on the same period.In line with the literature, our results revealed that the score of DRF with the pre-logbook RE was significantly inferior to the score of DRF obtained with the LE. However, the score of DRF with post-logbook RE was not different to the score obtained with LE. Our preliminary results are discussed by suggesting that disparities existing between Pre-logbook RE and LE might be undermined by other factors than methods influence on DRF. We recommend that further methodological comparisons should cares about effects of period investigated and influence of rereading on memory.

Dream recall and content vs the menstrual cycle: a cross-sectional study

Dream recall and content vs the menstrual cycle: a cross-sectional study

Effects of Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine) and a B Complex Preparation on Dreaming and Sleep.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that supplementation with vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) before bed can enhance dream vividness and recall. In a single pilot study, Ebben, Lequerica, and Spielman (2002) found that vitamin B6 had a dose-dependent effect of increasing scores on a composite measure of dream vividness, bizarreness, emotionality, and color. The present research replicated this study using a larger and more diverse sample of 100 participants from across Australia. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of the effects on dreaming and sleep of ingesting 240 mg vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride) before bed for five consecutive days. We also included an exploratory condition involving a B complex preparation containing a range of B vitamins. We found that vitamin B6 significantly increased the amount of dream content participants recalled but did not significantly affect dream vividness, bizarreness, or color, nor did it significantly affect other sleep-related variables. In contrast, participants in the B complex group showed significantly lower self-rated sleep quality and significantly higher tiredness on waking. We discuss the potential for using vitamin B6 in research on lucid dreaming.

Dissociated resting-state functional networks between the dream recall frequency and REM sleep percentage

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has been frequently associated with dreaming. However, mounting evidence obtained from behavioral, pharmacological, and brain imaging studies suggests that REM sleep is not indicative of the dream report and may originate from diverse neural substrates in brain functionality. The aim of the current study was to investigate the functional systems associated with inter-individual differences in dream recall and REM sleep through assessments of the resting-state functional connectivity. We collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data for functional connectivity evaluations from 43 healthy adult volunteers (23 men) before and after sleep. For assessment of the dream recall frequency, a 2-week sleep diary was maintained by all volunteers. In addition, whole-night polysomnography was performed for measuring the REM sleep percentage. Voxel-wise correlation analyses of 12 functional connectivity networks of interest with the dream recall frequency and REM sleep percentage were conducted using general linear model analysis. Both the dream recall frequency and REM sleep percentage showed negative associations with multiple brain functional networks. However, the dream recall frequency was mainly related to functional connectivity within the lateral visual network and thalamus, whereas the REM sleep percentage was mainly associated with connectivity within the frontoparietal networks and cerebellum. In addition, the dream recall frequency showed stronger coupling with the lateral visual network connectivity at night, whereas the coupling between the REM sleep percentage and cerebellum was higher in the morning. This indicated a significant time of day effect. Our results provide neuroimaging evidence that the functional system associated with the dream recall frequency is different from that associated with the REM sleep percentage.

Sleep and dream habits in a sample of French college students who report no sleep disorders.

There is a lack of up-to-date data on sleep and dream habits of college students. To fill in this gap, we used an online questionnaire sent to the student mailing lists of two major universities of Lyon (Lyon 1 and Lyon 2) for the recruitment of an functional magnetic resonance imaging study with sleep disorders as exclusion criteria. In the sample (1,137 French college students, 411 males, mean age=22.2±2.4years, body mass index=22.0±3.2kgm-2 ), on average, the participants reported spending about 8 hr in bed during weekdays, 9hr during the weekends, and 90.9% of them reported no difficulty falling asleep. Less than 0.4% of students reported to have sleep-walking episodes regularly, but nearly 7% reported regular sleep-talking episodes. The average dream recall frequency was about 3 mornings per week with a dream in mind. Dream recall frequency was positively correlated with the clarity of dream content and the frequency of lucid dreaming, and was negatively correlated with age. Fourteen percent of the students reported frequent lucid dreams, and 6% reported frequent recurrent dreams. We found a gender effect for several sleep and dream parameters, including dream recall frequency and time in bed, both of which were higher in women than in men. We have also observed differences between academic disciplines, namely humanities students (Lyon 2) reported spending more time in bed than sciences students (Lyon 1). These results confirm a gender difference for several sleep and dream parameters, and suggest a link between academic disciplines and sleep duration.

Spotlight on dream recall: the ages of dreams

Brain and sleep maturation covary across different stages of life. At the same time, dream generation and dream recall are intrinsically dependent on the development of neural systems. The aim of this paper is to review the existing studies about dreaming in infancy, adulthood, and the elderly stage of life, assessing whether dream mentation may reflect changes of the underlying cerebral activity and cognitive processes. It should be mentioned that some evidence from childhood investigations, albeit still weak and contrasting, revealed a certain correlation between cognitive skills and specific features of dream reports. In this respect, infantile amnesia, confabulatory reports, dream-reality discerning, and limitation in language production and emotional comprehension should be considered as important confounding factors. Differently, growing evidence in adults suggests that the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the encoding and retrieval of episodic memories may remain the same across different states of consciousness. More directly, some studies on adults point to shared neural mechanisms between waking cognition and corresponding dream features. A general decline in the dream recall frequency is commonly reported in the elderly, and it is explained in terms of a diminished interest in dreaming and in its emotional salience. Although empirical evidence is not yet available, an alternative hypothesis associates this reduction to an age-related cognitive decline. The state of the art of the existing knowledge is partially due to the variety of methods used to investigate dream experience. Very few studies in elderly and no investigations in childhood have been performed to understand whether dream recall is related to specific electrophysiological pattern at different ages. Most of all, the lack of longitudinal psychophysiological studies seems to be the main issue. As a main message, we suggest that future longitudinal studies should collect dream reports upon awakening from different sleep states and include neurobiological measures with cognitive performances.

Dream Recall Frequency and Sleep in Patients with Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder

Dream Recall Frequency and Sleep in Patients with Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder

Emotion, emotion regulation and sleep: An intimate relationship.

In recent years, research has witnessed an increasing interest in the bidirectional relationship between emotion and sleep. Sleep seems important for restoring daily functioning, whereas deprivation of sleep makes us more emotionally aroused and sensitive to stressful stimuli and events. Sleep appears to be essential to our ability to cope with emotional stress in everyday life. However, when daily stress is insufficiently regulated, it may result in mental health problems and sleep disturbances too. Not only does emotion impact sleep, but there is also evidence that sleep plays a key role in regulating emotion. Emotional events during waking hours affect sleep, and the quality and amount of sleep influences the way we react to these events impacting our general well-being. Although we know that daytime emotional stress affects sleep by influencing sleep physiology, dream patterns, dream content and the emotion within a dream, its exact role is still unclear. Other effects that have been found are the exaggeration of the startle response, decrease in dream recall and elevation of awakening thresholds from rapid eye movement (REM), REM-sleep, increased or decreased latency to REM-sleep, increase in percentage of REM-density, REM-sleep duration, as well as the occurrence of arousals in sleep as a marker of sleep disruption. Equally, the way an individual copes with emotional stress, or the way in which an individual regulates emotion may modulate the effects of emotional stress on sleep. The research presented here supports the idea that adaptive emotion regulation benefits our follow-up sleep. We thus conclude the current review with a call for future research in order to clarify further the precise relationship between sleep, emotion and emotion regulation, as well as to explain further how sleep dissolves our emotional stress.

Differences in Recumbent, Ecstatic Trance Postures in Terms of Dream Recall, Imagined Interactions, and Heart Rate

Research has demonstrated the health benefits of a wide range of spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer, and similar nonspiritual practices like mindfulness. Shamanism is a spiritual practice that uses dream recall during ecstatic trances, and scientific research has shown health benefits of dream recall. Researchers have long realized the importance of intrapersonal communication occurring in daydreams, called imagined interactions (IIs), and recently extended the theory to include night dreams. IIs serve six functions: rehearsal, relational maintenance, catharsis, conflict-linkage, self-understanding, and compensation. This study investigates the health effects of ecstatic posture on dream recall in conjunction with the functions of IIs. Results indicate that ecstatic posture while recalling dreams is associated with both heart rate and heart rate variability. However, the II function determines whether the effect is positive or negative.

Lucid dream induction using three different cognitive methods

Lucid dreaming is a rare phenomenon, therefore different induction techniques are used to increase the lucid dream frequency. In the present study three cognitive methods were tested: Dream diary, Wake-up-back-to-Bed, and reality testing/reflection. Altogether, 110 participants completed the three-week study protocol. The present findings showed that although the overall effects were not significant, slight increases in lucid dream frequency due to the cognitive techniques (Wake-up-back-to-Bed, reality testing/reflection) were measured. Future studies should extend the study interval, increase participants’ motivation and dream recall and lucidity should be measured every morning.

Development difference in Dream Recall -Comparison of Dream Recall frequency and Dream Contents between Japanese High School Students, University Students and the Elderly-

Development difference in Dream Recall -Comparison of Dream Recall frequency and Dream Contents between Japanese High School Students, University Students and the Elderly-

When was your earliest dream? Association of very early dream recall with frequent current nightmares supports a stress-acceleration explanation of nightmares.

When was your earliest dream? Association of very early dream recall with frequent current nightmares supports a stress-acceleration explanation of nightmares.

Colors in dreams and the introduction of color TV in Germany: An online study

Visual elements are important ingredients of dreams, so dream objects should be – based on the continuity hypothesis of dreaming – as colorful as the waking world. However, the percentages of recalled colored versus black and white dreams as estimated by the participants varied considerably across studies. In the present online study, 2701 persons completed a question about recalling colors in their dreams with three options: percentage of black and white dreams, percentage of colored dreams, and percentage of dreams with no memory of colors. The older participants who most likely had watched black and white TV reported higher recall of black and white dreams than younger persons while the younger group with access to colored TV estimated that their dreams include more often colors compared to the older group. Since the attitude towards dreams and dream recall frequency were positively associated with the reporting of colored dreams, one might hypothesize that dreamers may attribute colors to a dream even if they are do not remember the colors of their actual dreams. In order to validate the present findings, future studies should include the amount of media consumption (TV, cinema etc.) over the life span of the individual and elicit possible confounding factors like age-related memory changes, attention to colors in waking life, and emotional valence of colored dream elements.

An investigation of a dual-processing hypothesis of lucid dreaming

Neuroimaging research has isolated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) as a brain structure associated with lucid dreaming, indicating that higher-order executive functions are involved in the onset of lucid dreaming. The DLPFC has also been implicated in the onset of Type 2 thinking. As such, a hypothetical link exists between Type 2 thinking and lucid dreaming, moderated by DLPFC activity. The present study investigated this potential link, hypothesising that lucid dreaming frequency would be related to Type 2 thinking. In Study 1, participants (N=103) reported their lucid dream frequency (LDF) retrospectively, and completed the Cognitive Reflections Test (CRT), which measures Type 2 thinking, as well as several other measures that have previously been found to correlate with LDF.Sinceretrospective estimates may be prone to memory errors and biases, a second study investigating LDF using prospective measures was conducted. In Study 2, participants (N=30) retrospectively estimated their LDF and also prospectively reported their LDF using dream diaries for 1 month; these participants also completed the CRT, a syllogisms test, and several other measures that have previously been found to correlate with LDF. No evidence was found for a dual-processing hypothesis of lucid dreaming:in Study 1, CRT scores did not correlate with retrospective LDF, and in Study 2, neither prospective nor retrospective LDF correlated with either CRT or syllogisms test scores. Significant relationships were found, however, between previously identified correlates of LDF: dream recall frequency; the personality trait “openness to experience”; and internal locus of control. It was additionally found that retrospective and prospective estimates of LDF correlated very highly, indicating the retrospective estimate of LDF is a valid measure.

Dream Content and its Relationship to Trait Anxiety

Although numerous dream content findings support the view that dreams reflect the dreamer’s waking experiences, thoughts and concerns, research on the relation between dream content and various personality dimensions has yielded mixed results. The present study investigated the relationship between trait anxiety and everyday dream content in healthy women. Thirty adult women completed a standardized measure of trait anxiety and kept a home dream log for two to three weeks. A total of 502 dream reports were collected and scored on various content scales, including aggressive interactions, failures, misfortune, and dream report length. There was a significant positive correlation between trait anxiety and dream report length but no significant relationships were found between trait anxiety and any of the other dream content variables. These findings suggest that while higher levels of trait anxiety in women are associated with more detailed dream recall they do not significantly impact the actual content of everyday dreams. More refined measures of anxiety may be required, however, to better capture the multidimensional nature of anxiety and its potential relation to dream content.

Predicting Dream Recall: EEG Activation During NREM Sleep or Shared Mechanisms with Wakefulness?

The common knowledge of a uniqueness of REM sleep as a privileged scenario of dreaming still persists, although consolidated empirical evidence shows that the assumption that dreaming is just an epiphenomenon of REM sleep is no longer tenable. However, the brain mechanisms underlying dream generation and its encoding in memory during NREM sleep are still mostly unknown. In fact, only few studies have investigated on the mechanisms of dream phenomenology related to NREM sleep. For this reason, our study is specifically aimed to elucidate the electrophysiological (EEG) correlates of dream recall (DR) upon NREM sleep awakenings. Under the assumption that EEG activity predicts the presence/absence of DR also during NREM sleep, we have investigated whether DR from stage 2 NREM sleep shares similar brain mechanisms to those involved in the encoding of episodic memory during wakefulness, or it depends on the specific electrophysiological milieu of the sleep period along the desynchronized/synchronized EEG continuum. We collected DR from a multiple nap protocol in a within-subjects design. We found that DR is predicted by an extensive reduction of delta activity during the last segment of sleep, encompassing left frontal and temporo-parietal areas. The results could represent an update on the mechanisms underlying the sleep mentation during NREM sleep. In particular, they support the hypothesis that an increased cortical EEG activation is a prerequisite for DR, and they are not necessarily in conflict with the hypothesis of common wake-sleep mechanisms. We also confirmed that EEG correlates of DR depend on a state-like relationship.