Frontiers in Sleep • June 24, 2026 • Adam Haar Horowitz, Karen Konkoly, Michelle Carr et al.
A pilot study tested whether targeted dream incubation (TDI) at sleep onset can direct dream content into subsequent REM sleep. Eleven participants received verbal prompts about a tree and were awakened serially at sleep onset, then during a daytime nap. All 11 successfully incubated the target theme at sleep onset. Of the eight who entered REM sleep, four (50%) incorporated the tree into their first REM dream, and five (63%) did so in later REM dreams. Results suggest TDI may influence REM dream content, offering a method to explore how dream generation and function may be continuous or differ across sleep stages.
Quality in Sport • June 20, 2026 • Arkadiusz Adam Psiuk
Motor learning in sports benefits from both physical practice and sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Waking motor imagery engages brain networks similar to actual movement, while slow-wave sleep and REM sleep support procedural memory through neural replay. Lucid dreaming—awareness during sleep—may allow mental rehearsal that partially reactivates prefrontal regions and shows physiological correlates of dreamed movement. Preliminary evidence suggests lucid dream practice can improve waking performance comparably to waking mental practice. It offers a low-physical-load tool for rehabilitation, tapering, and pre-competition stress management, though low lucid dream frequency, variable induction reliability, and few controlled trials in elite athletes call for cautious use.
Cell reports • April 7, 2026 • Nicolas Decat, Arthur Le Coz, Jade Sénéchal et al.
Mental experiences during wakefulness and sleep are not as distinct as commonly thought. Analyzing electroencephalography (EEG) from 92 participants during daytime rest, researchers collected 375 reports of mental content scored on bizarreness, fluidity, spontaneity, and wake perception. Clustering these reports revealed four distinct types of mental states. Crucially, all four types occurred across wakefulness, N1 sleep, and N2 sleep. EEG measures of spectral power, complexity, and connectivity differentiated these mental states independently of whether participants were awake or asleep. The findings indicate that the waking and sleeping brain can produce the same mental state, and that fine-grained brain dynamics shape the content of mental experiences.
Journal of Anglican Studies • March 31, 2026 • Fergus J. King, Lenore Margaret Porter
On the thirtieth anniversary of her prayer being included in the Anglican Prayer Book for Australia, the author describes the dreaming process that gave rise to it. She compares the value of dreams in Aboriginal culture with the privileged role of dreams and visions as altered states of consciousness in early Christian texts. This comparison raises questions about how such experiences are valued within Christian theology and spirituality, particularly because Western and Northern resistance to these phenomena in the modern period has made them seem suspect.
Religions • February 24, 2026 • Youngsun Yang
Liminal states of consciousness such as lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are not merely odd psychological events but were deliberately cultivated in Indian religious and philosophical traditions as 'architectures of liminality' to investigate self, consciousness, and reality. A comparative analysis of Vedāntic, Yogic, Buddhist, and Jain systems reveals a spectrum of interpretations: from Buddhism's mind-only projection model in dream yoga to Jainism's subtle-material interaction model in karmic ontology, and from modern neuroscience's embodied cognition to classical Indian disembodied consciousness theories. Understanding these states requires integrating first-person reports with their soteriological, ritual, and metaphysical contexts, challenging reductionist approaches in consciousness studies.
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences • January 5, 2026 • Jennifer Windt, Manuela Kirberg, Tomas Andrillon
This special issue brings together theoretical and empirical work on dreaming and waking mind wandering, two areas with growing attention in cognitive neuroscience and psychology but limited philosophical exploration. Despite being studied separately, phenomenological and neurophysiological overlaps between waking mind wandering and sleep-related experiences indicate they are closely linked. These connections prompt questions about the nature and functions of spontaneous mental phenomena, their relationship to wakefulness and sleep, and implications for theories of attention, action, and consciousness.
Consciousness and cognition • January 1, 2026 • Manuela Kirberg, Jennifer Windt
Dreaming and mind wandering share features of spontaneous thought, but their precise relationship remains unclear. Bizarreness—unusual features of experience—has traditionally been seen as unique to dreams, though some propose it exists on a continuum where dreaming is an intensified form of mind wandering. Analyzing 379 spontaneous reports from the same participants in a naturalistic setting, the findings show that both dreaming and waking mind wandering have unique bizarreness profiles with similarities and differences. The comparison between the two changes depending on the type, subtype, and content of bizarreness measured. Thus, dreams cannot simply be described as intensified mind wandering; a more nuanced approach with specific measures is needed.
Topoi • December 3, 2025 • Gaia Mizzon, Jennifer Windt
The concept of narrative is widely used in philosophical discussions of dreams, but little attention has been paid to how assumptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the debate. The authors argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with dream reports and then with dreams themselves, leading to the use of features of literary fiction as an explanatory framework for understanding dreams and their formation. Focusing on the categories of authorship and composition, they show that divergent philosophical accounts share the unacknowledged assumption that dreams have a narrative structure and that dreaming is a process of narrative construction. The paper lays groundwork for exploring narrative thinking in spontaneous thought during both wakefulness and sleep.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences • October 16, 2025 • Rasmus Sinn, Marc Borner
Jean-Paul Sartre's early phenomenology treats dreaming as an active, imaginative consciousness distinct from perception. Predictive Processing (PP) theory, which describes the brain as continuously generating predictions across hierarchical neural levels, conceptualizes dreaming as the predictive brain's activity constrained by REM sleep physiology and disconnected from sensory input. Although PP typically views imagination and perception as overlapping while Sartre treats them as separate mental phenomena, this paper argues the conflict can be resolved across sub-personal and personal levels of analysis. Under PP, relentless prediction generation without sensory constraint parallels Sartre's notion of dreaming consciousness as "fascinated" by its own images, helping refine PP accounts and situating Sartre's phenomenology as a resource for contemporary dream research.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews • September 1, 2025 • Ruben Laukkonen, Karl Friston, Shamil Chandaria • 17 citations
A theoretical paper proposes that active inference can model consciousness through three conditions: a world model (epistemic field) defining what can be known, inferential competition (Bayesian binding) selecting only coherent inferences that reduce long-term uncertainty, and epistemic depth—a recursive sharing of beliefs throughout a hierarchical system like the brain. This loop allows the world model to know itself non-locally and continuously evidence that knowing, distinct from self-consciousness. The authors formally propose a hyper-model for precision-control whose latent states encode global weighting rules, enacting epistemic agency and flexibility reminiscent of general intelligence. The theory also addresses altered states, meditation, and the full spectrum of conscious experience.
Scientific Reports • December 6, 2018 • Benjamin Baird, Anna Castelnovo, Olivia Gosseries et al. • 74 citations
People who have frequent lucid dreams—three or more per week—show stronger functional connections between the left anterior prefrontal cortex and several brain regions, including the angular gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus, compared to people who rarely or never lucid dream. These connections involve areas that are normally less active during sleep. No differences in brain structure were found. The findings suggest that frequent lucid dreaming is linked to how certain brain networks communicate, not to structural differences.
Frontiers in Neuroscience • January 22, 2018 • Camila Sanz, Federico Zamberlán, Earth Erowid et al. • 112 citations
Subjective reports of experiences under hallucinogens like LSD are semantically most similar to reports of high-lucidity dreams, while Datura (a deliriant) resembles low-lucidity dreams. Sedatives, stimulants, antipsychotics, and antidepressants rank lowest in similarity to dream reports. Frequent words across both dreams and hallucinogen experiences include perception-related terms ("see," "visual," "color"), emotion ("fear"), setting ("inside," "outside"), and family members ("mom," "dad"). The analysis confirms that hallucinogens produce experiences with the highest semantic similarity to dreams among all psychoactive substances.
Choice Reviews Online • January 20, 2016 • 121 citations
Dreaming is conscious experience during sleep, yet its relevance to theories of consciousness and the self is often neglected due to conceptual confusion about what dreaming is. Jennifer Windt develops a conceptual framework that clarifies whether dreams are perceptions, hallucinations, imaginations, thoughts, beliefs, or self-conscious states. She argues that such a framework must be conceptually sound, phenomenologically plausible, and informed by neuroscience. Integrating historical and contemporary philosophy with empirical sleep research, Windt builds a new theoretical understanding of dreaming that enriches discussions of consciousness and the self and raises new research questions.
SLEEP • February 27, 2015 • Pauline Dodet, Mario Chávez, Smaranda Leu‐semenescu et al. • 115 citations
People with narcolepsy are far more likely to experience lucid dreaming—being aware that they are dreaming while still asleep—than healthy individuals. In a case-control study, 77.4% of 53 narcolepsy patients reported having lucid dreams, compared to 49.1% of 53 controls, averaging 7.6 lucid dreams per month versus 0.3. During monitored naps, 7 of 12 narcoleptic frequent lucid dreamers (but none of 5 controls) successfully signaled from a lucid REM sleep state. Brain wave analysis showed lower delta, theta, and alpha power and reduced frontal coherence during lucid versus non-lucid REM sleep, along with longer REM duration. The findings suggest narcolepsy provides a useful model for studying lucid dreaming.
Journal of Neuroscience • January 21, 2015 • Elisa Filevich, Martin Dresler, Timothy R. Brick et al. • 89 citations
People who frequently have lucid dreams—dreams in which they know they are dreaming—show structural and functional differences in a brain region linked to self-reflection and thought monitoring. The frontopolar cortex (BA9/10) contained more gray matter in high-lucidity dreamers compared with low-lucidity dreamers, and this same area showed stronger activity during a thought-monitoring task in the high-lucidity group. The findings suggest that lucid dreaming and metacognitive abilities share common neural systems, offering insight into how higher-order consciousness can arise during sleep.
The American Journal of Psychology • April 21, 2014 • 104 citations
Lucid dreamers are aware they are dreaming. An online survey of 684 respondents, 571 of whom were lucid dreamers (83.5%), found that lucid dreams most often begin spontaneously in adolescence and last about 14 minutes on average. Dreamers are typically active, planning actions like flying, talking with dream characters, or having sex, but often fail to remember or execute these intentions due to awakening or obstacles in the dream. The frequency of lucid dreaming was the strongest predictor of dream phenomenology, with some differences linked to age, gender, and whether the dreamer was natural or self-trained.
Frontiers in human neuroscience • January 1, 2013 • Kieran C R Fox, Savannah Nijeboer, Elizaveta Solomonova et al. • 297 citations
Mind wandering during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep share many features: both involve audiovisual, emotional, fantasy-tinged narratives tied to personal concerns, draw on long-term memory, simulate social interactions, and lack meta-awareness. Comparing neuroimaging data shows that both states activate default mode network regions such as medial prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe, and posterior cingulate, which support self-referential thought and memory. However, dreaming appears as an intensified version of mind wandering, with longer, more immersive, and more visual content, along with even deeper deactivation of prefrontal executive regions responsible for cognitive control and metacognition. This suggests dreaming amplifies the same features that distinguish mind wandering from goal-directed thought.
Journal of Sleep Research • May 29, 2012 • 76 citations
Lucid dreaming is common in young children, with its incidence dropping around age 16. A survey of students aged 6-19 found that those in higher-level schools reported more lucid dreams than those in lower-level schools. The authors propose a link between the natural occurrence of lucid dreaming and brain maturation, considering methodological issues.
Perceptual and Motor Skills • February 1, 2011 • Michael Schredl, Daniel Erlacher • 81 citations
About half (51%) of a representative sample of 919 German adults reported having had at least one lucid dream—a dream in which the person knows they are dreaming. Women recalled lucid dreams significantly more often than men, and lucid dream recall decreased with age. These differences may be explained by overall dream recall frequency, which correlated moderately (r = .57) with lucid dream frequency. Education, marital status, and income showed no relationship with how often people had lucid dreams. The high prevalence suggests that laboratory research on lucid dreams could further understanding of sleep, dreaming, and consciousness.
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics • February 18, 2010 • Antonio Zadra, Robert O. Pihl • 120 citations
Lucid dreaming, where a person becomes aware they are dreaming while still asleep, can help treat recurrent nightmares. In five cases, treatments combining relaxation, guided imagery, and lucid dream induction, or induction alone, eliminated nightmares in four people and reduced their intensity and frequency in the fifth over a one-year follow-up. These results align with earlier reports and suggest that training in lucid dreaming has therapeutic value, though it remains unclear whether the benefit comes from lucidity itself or the ability to change the dream.
SLEEP • September 1, 2009 • Ursula Voss, R. Holzmann, Inka Tuin et al. • 443 citations
Lucid dreaming combines hallucinatory dream activity with wake-like reflective awareness and control. Electrophysiological recordings from six trained student volunteers show that lucid dreaming shares REM-like power in delta and theta frequency bands but exhibits higher-than-REM activity in the gamma band, peaking around 40 Hz, especially in frontal and frontolateral regions. Overall brain coherence during lucid dreaming resembles waking levels and is significantly higher than in REM sleep across the analyzed spectrum; waking shows high alpha coherence, while lucid dreaming shows increased delta and theta coherence, largest in frontolateral and frontal areas. These findings suggest lucid dreaming is a hybrid state of consciousness with measurable physiological differences from both waking and REM sleep.
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics • January 1, 2006 • 155 citations
A pilot study tested lucid dreaming treatment (LDT) for chronic nightmares. Twenty-three nightmare sufferers were randomly assigned to an individual LDT session, a group LDT session, or a waiting list. Twelve weeks later, nightmare frequency decreased in both treatment groups. Sleep quality and posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity showed no significant changes. Becoming lucid during nightmares was not necessary for the reduction in nightmare frequency. The key therapeutic component—exposure, mastery, or lucidity—remains unclear.
Advances in consciousness research • February 15, 2000 • Stephen LaBerge, Donald J. Degracia • 77 citations
Lucid dreaming, like all conscious experience, varies greatly between individuals due to a combination of anatomical, physiological, and psychological factors. Anatomical limits include breath and sensory system development; physiological factors include sleep and REM sleep needs, along with inborn activation and damping tendencies; psychological variation arises from recent and long-term experiences, habits of interacting with the environment, and assumptions about how the world works. The quoted passages do not support any conclusions about the nature of eroticism in lucid dreaming, only that the experience itself is subject to individual variation.
Perceptual and Motor Skills • June 1, 1981 • 237 citations
Lucid dreaming—dreaming while aware that one is dreaming—was verified in five selected subjects who signaled that they knew they were dreaming while continuing to dream during unambiguous REM sleep. The signals were specific dream actions with observable physical counterparts, performed according to pre-sleep agreement. This signaling ability allows proficient lucid dreamers to conduct dream experiments, marking the exact timing of dream events to enable precise psychophysiological correlations and systematic hypothesis testing.