The Dynamics of Affect Across the Wake-Sleep Cycle: From Waking Mind-Wandering to Night-Time Dreaming

Affective experiences occur across the wake-sleep cycle—from active wakefulness to resting wakefulness (i.e., mind-wandering or daydreaming) to sleep (i.e., dreaming). Yet, we know little about the dynamics of affective experiences across these states. Here, we investigated the within-person fluctuations in the prevalence and valence of affect experienced during mind-wandering and night-time dreaming. We compared the affective ratings of 328 mind-wandering and 529 dream episodes from 32 healthy adults. In a sub-sample, we additionally analysed the affective ratings of 548 waking episodes from 15 participants. Results showed that mind-wandering was more positively valenced than dreaming, and that both mind-wandering and dreaming were more negatively valenced than active wakefulness. We also compared participants’ self-ratings of affect with external ratings of affective experiences described in verbal reports regarding the same episodes. With self-ratings all the episodes were predominated by positive affect. However, the affective valence of verbal reports changed from positively valenced waking reports to affectively balanced mind-wandering reports to negatively valenced dream reports. Together, the findings show that (1) the positivity bias (i.e., more positive than negative affect) characteristic to waking experiences decreases across the wake-sleep continuum, and (2) conclusions regarding the affective nature of subjective experiences depend on whether self-ratings of affect or the verbal reports describing these experiences are analysed. These findings contribute to our understanding of the nature and possible function of affective experiences across different states of consciousness and call for more integration between the fields of emotion research, mind-wandering research, and dream research.

The route to recall a dream: Theoretical considerations and methodological implications

The goal of this paper is to shed new light on the relation between dream recall and dream experiences by providing a thorough analysis of the process that leads to dream reports. Three crucial steps of this process will be distinguished: dream production (the generation of a conscious experience during sleep), dream encoding (storing a trace of this experience in memory), and dream retrieval (accessing the memory trace upon awakening). The first part of the paper will assess how major theories think about the relationship between dream reports and these distinct steps. The second part will systematise how trait and state factors affecting dream recall — given different theoretical assumptions — might interact with dream production, encoding and retrieval. Understanding how the distinct steps of dream recall can be modulated by different factors is crucial for getting a better grip on how to acquire information about these steps empirically, and for drawing methodological conclusions with regard to the tools dream research relies on to collect subjective data about dream experiences. The third part of the paper will analyse how laboratory reports, logs and retrospective scales interact with the different factors that affect the distinct steps leading to dream reports, and will argue that prospective methods provide more direct access to data regarding dream production and encoding than retrospective methods, which — due to their inability to provide systematic control over the factors affecting the retrieval stage screen-off the variability in the production and the encoding of dreams.

Investigation on Neurobiological Mechanisms of Dreaming in the New Decade

Dream research has advanced significantly over the last twenty years, thanks to the new applications of neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques. Many findings pointed out that mental activity during sleep and wakefulness shared similar neural bases. On the other side, recent studies have highlighted that dream experience is promoted by significant brain activation, characterized by reduced low frequencies and increased rapid frequencies. Additionally, several studies confirmed that the posterior parietal area and prefrontal cortex are responsible for dream experience. Further, early results revealed that dreaming might be manipulated by sensory stimulations that would provoke the incorporation of specific cues into the dream scenario. Recently, transcranial stimulation techniques have been applied to modulate the level of consciousness during sleep, supporting previous findings and adding new information about neural correlates of dream recall. Overall, although multiple studies suggest that both the continuity and activation hypotheses provide a growing understanding of neural processes underlying dreaming, several issues are still unsolved. The impact of state-/trait-like variables, the influence of circadian and homeostatic factors, and the examination of parasomnia-like events to access dream contents are all opened issues deserving further deepening in future research.

Supernal Dreaming: On Myth and Metaphysics

The following article is an exploration of supernal dreaming, a type of dream that engages the dreamer as a profound, participatory, and often revelatory event. Dream types are not well developed in dream research; this article contributes to the development of a more typological approach to dream analysis. Four dream types are presented and contextualized with reference to their metaphysical and ontological significance. The types discussed are normative-rational dreams, mythic-imaginal dreams, psychic-intuitive dreams, and supernal-transpersonal dreams. The various types are illustrated with examples from the author’s extensive dream journal in order to highlight the subtle distinctions between the dream types, and how they might intersect or overlap. The dream morphology is placed within a larger context of metatheory based on the ontological significance of agency and its relationship, through dreaming, to a sentient cosmology. This cosmology is based on a creative, process-based metaphysics, in which dreams function to sustain and promote human development. Dreaming is presented as a visionary capacity leading to new enactive and embodied ways of life. The article shows how dreams can act as a stimulus for ontological insights and become a basis for paranormal perceptions and an inspirational approach to dream actualization.

Book Review: Dreams: Understanding Biology, Psychology, and Culture

Dreams: Understanding Biology, Psychology, and Culture is a two-volume reference work that aims to educate readers about sleep and dream research. According to the editors, the work covers “evolutionary perspectives on sleep and dreaming to the most current research into the neuroscience, as well as current psychological theory, therapeutic application, and the artistic and cultural treatment of dreams” (xii). Intended for students and researchers interested in current understandings of dreams and how we study them, this is a valuable addition to the literature, as most dream reference guides focus primarily on artistic and cultural responses to dreams.

Structural differences between REM and non-REM dream reports assessed by graph analysis

Dream reports collected after rapid eye movement sleep (REM) awakenings are, on average, longer, more vivid, bizarre, emotional and story-like compared to those collected after non-REM. However, a comparison of the word-to-word structural organization of dream reports is lacking, and traditional measures that distinguish REM and non-REM dreaming may be confounded by report length. This problem is amenable to the analysis of dream reports as non-semantic directed word graphs, which provide a structural assessment of oral reports, while controlling for individual differences in verbosity. Against this background, the present study had two main aims: Firstly, to investigate differences in graph structure between REM and non-REM dream reports, and secondly, to evaluate how non-semantic directed word graph analysis compares to the widely used measure of report length in dream analysis. To do this, we analyzed a set of 125 dream reports obtained from 19 participants in controlled laboratory awakenings from REM and N2 sleep. We found that: (1) graphs from REM sleep possess a larger connectedness compared to those from N2; (2) measures of graph structure can predict ratings of dream complexity, where increases in connectedness and decreases in randomness are observed in relation to increasing dream report complexity; and (3) measures of the Largest Connected Component of a graph can improve a model containing report length in predicting sleep stage and dream complexity. These results indicate that dream reports sampled after REM awakening have on average a larger connectedness compared to those sampled after N2 (i.e. words recur with a longer range), a difference which appears to be related to underlying differences in dream complexity. Altogether, graph analysis represents a promising method for dream research, due to its automated nature and potential to complement report length in dream analysis.