The Dream Effect of Waking Thought, Experience, and Illness: A Research Proposal

Dream imagery and frequency amongst individuals who are victims of amputation, depression, anxiety, trauma, and many mental disorders, have produced similar content results across the board of many studies. Specifics of other biological and physiological factors that contribute to such content are also examined in the data presented, along with specific case studies that have resulted in self-reported statistics that demonstrate the outcome and impact of waking-day stressors, experiences, and state/trait anxiety on sleeping individuals. Previous data has been collected on dream content recorded amongst amputees, individuals who experienced dreams while undergoing mental disorders, dreams that were supposedly induced with familiar scents, and other outside factors that contributed to the purpose of the study. Further examination of participants is proposed, along with information given on sampling methods, study techniques, and possible outcomes.

Virtual reality training of lucid dreaming

Metacognitive reflections on one's current state of mind are largely absent during dreaming. Lucid dreaming as the exception to this rule is a rare phenomenon; however, its occurrence can be facilitated through cognitive training. A central idea of respective training strategies is to regularly question one's phenomenal experience: is the currently experienced world real , or just a dream? Here, we tested if such lucid dreaming training can be enhanced with dream-like virtual reality (VR): over the course of four weeks, volunteers underwent lucid dreaming training in VR scenarios comprising dream-like elements, classical lucid dreaming training or no training. We found that VR-assisted training led to significantly stronger increases in lucid dreaming compared to the no-training condition. Eye signal-verified lucid dreams during polysomnography supported behavioural results. We discuss the potential mechanisms underlying these findings, in particular the role of synthetic dream-like experiences, incorporation of VR content in dream imagery serving as memory cues, and extended dissociative effects of VR session on subsequent experiences that might amplify lucid dreaming training during wakefulness. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.

The Flesh of Time: Solaris and the Chiasmic Image

This chapter explores Solaris’s chiasmatic interpenetration of the real and the phantasmatic in the context of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh defined as the non-physical substrate of the visible world and the virtual. Thanks to its genre of science fiction, Efird argues, Solaris accomplishes more convincingly the physical realization of the characters’ dream imagery, which vividly exemplifies Tarkovsky’s cinematic materialism. Besides numerous scenes with mirrors, the dynamic chiasm of the flesh, which is both physical and spiritual, fully manifests itself in the ambiguous figure of Hari who is simultaneously the object of Kelvin’s memory as well as the self-conscious subject on her own.

Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment

Lucid dreams often coincide with having control over dream events in real-time, although the limitations of dream control are not completely understood. The current study probed the ability of lucid dreamers to reinstate waking scene memories while dreaming. After brief exposure to an experimental scene, participants were asked to reinstate the scene while lucid dreaming (i.e., change dream scenery to match real-world scene). Qualitative analysis revealed that successful dream scene reinstatements were overwhelmingly inaccurate with respect to the original experimental scene. Importantly, reinstatement inaccuracies held even when the dreamer was aware of them during the dream, suggesting a dissociation between memory access while dreaming and dream imagery. The ability to change the environment of a dream speaks to the high amount of lucid dream control, yet the inaccuracies speak to a lack of detailed control. Reinstating context during lucid sleep offers an experimental method to investigate sleep, dreams, and memory.

Can a microdynamic approach to sleep-onset imagery solve the overabundance problem of dreaming? Commentary on Tore Nielsen’s “Microdream neurophenomenology”

Nielsen proposes that a microdynamic approach to experiences occurring in the earliest stages of sleep onset, which he calls microdreams, can shed light on the process of dream imagery formation. I discuss microdreams in the context of simulation views, in which dreaming is defined as the immersive experience of a virtual world centered on a virtual self. I also evaluate his proposal to expand the dimensions included in the oneiragogic spectrum by kinesis. I conclude that while a subset of microdreams might not fulfill the conditions to count as even minimal dreams, their investigation can nonetheless help address key questions in dream research and may even constitute a distinctive pathway to the generation of full-fledged dreaming.