Microdream Neurophenomenology

Summary

Microdreams, the brief images experienced at sleep onset, offer insights into how waking experiences transform into dreams. This chapter discusses their characteristics and contributions to understanding dreaming, including a new classification system for dream phenomenology, a framework for assessing memory inputs, and the identification of two new types of imagery. Continued exploration of microdreams may clarify key aspects of dreaming and its neurophysiological basis.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The fleeting dream images of sleep onset afford a rare glimpse at how experience is transformed from the perceptually grounded consciousness of wakefulness to the hallucinatory simulations of dreaming. These images, or microdreams, are briefer, simpler, and more accessible to phenomenological scrutiny than are the long REM dreams traditionally recorded in the sleep lab. This chapter shows that a focus on microdream phenomenology has thus far contributed to (1) developing a classification system for dreaming’s core phenomenology (Windt`s oneiragogic spectrum), (2) establishing a structure for assessing dreaming’s multiple memory inputs (multi-temporal memory sources), (3) furthering Silberer’s project for sleep onset imagery by uncovering two new types of imagery (autosensory imagery, exosensory imagery), and (4) providing a larger framework for explaining some microdreaming processes (multisensory integration approach). A continued focus on microdream neurophenomenology may help resolve outstanding questions about dreaming’s core features, neurophysiological correlates, and memory sources.