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Overall, these findings support models of dreaming as an immersive, hyper-associative simulation of waking life, where individual differences and shared reality are dynamically integrated into novel narratives.

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At the same time, shared external events modulate dream features. During COVID-19 😷, dream reports showed increased emotional intensity and constraints on action, followed by gradual normalization 💉 over time (we analyzed data collected between 2020 and 2024).

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We found that dream content and phenomenology are shaped by the interaction between individual traits and waking experiences. Traits such as mind-wandering propensity and interest in dreams were associated with dream features such as bizarreness, perceptual immersion, and narrative fragmentation.

At the same time, dream reports showed a distinct narrative organization: more similar to cinematic or story-like descriptions than to waking reports. Dreams unfold as dynamic, immersive scenes with frequent setting shifts and perceptual richness. 🎬 🍿

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Contrary to the common view of dreams as predominantly bizarre, only ~8% contained clearly fantastic elements. 🐉 Most dreams were grounded in everyday life, including social interactions, work, and education, supporting continuity with waking experience. 💼 🎒

Take-home idea: Dreams may act as an “internal scaffold” of sleep They: • Maintain the sense of being deeply asleep • Buffer internal brain activation • Possibly protect sleep continuity This immersive (Matrix-like) simulation may represent a functional advantage of dreaming.

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We also found that across the night: • Physiological sleep pressure ↓ • Subjective sleepiness ↓ BUT… 👉 Perceived sleep depth actually increases Interestingly, dreams also became more immersive over time. ➡️ Thus, dreams may help sustain the feeling of deep sleep even as sleep pressure fades...

Even more interesting: Not all mental states are equal 👇 • Deepest sleep feeling: → vivid, immersive dreams → or complete unconsciousness • Shallowest sleep feeling: → minimal awareness (“just being there”, no content) So: it is not just consciousness... it is the type of consciousness.

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Classic view: 👉 Deep sleep = low brain activity (more slow waves) 👉 Less consciousness = deeper sleep But our data challenge this. We found that subjective sleep depth is not just about the amount of brain activity: it depends on what you experience while asleep.

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We combined high-density EEG + serial awakenings in NREM2 sleep (over 1,000 awakenings from ~200 nights). After each awakening, participants reported: • What they were experiencing • How deep their sleep felt • How sleepy they felt This let us link brain activity, experience, and perception.

SPACE Lab @spacelabimt.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

🧠💤 New paper out in @plosbiology.org! Together with Adriana Michalak (@dr-adri.bsky.social), Davide Marzoli, Francesco Pietrogiacomi et al., we show that dreaming, especially immersive dreaming, plays a key role in how deep sleep feels. 🔗 doi.org/10.1371/jour... @erc.europa.eu #ERC-StG #sleep

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New review from the Lab: Bontempi et al., "The Effects of RBD Medications on Dream Content: A Critical Review of Evidence" 💊 "Available evidence offers only limited support for clonazepam, melatonin, and pramipexole in reducing disturbing dream content" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

The Effects of RBD Medications on Dream Content: A Critical Review of Evidence

REM sleep behavior disorder, often an early marker of α-synucleinopathies, is characterized by the loss of REM-related muscle atonia and the occurrenc…

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Reposted by SPACE Lab

bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Sleep deprivation exhibits age-dependent effect on infra-slow global brain activity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…

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SPACE Lab @spacelabimt.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

🧠 The official website of the Neuroscience of Dreaming Summer School (4–8 May 2026, IMT School, Lucca, Italy) is now live: nodsummerschool.imtlucca.it 👉 Check out the confirmed speakers + our program overview. Detailed schedule and registration coming soon!

Neuroscience of Dreaming - Summer School
May 4-8, 2026 @ IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy

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Our study challenges the assumption that no dream recall = unconsciousness. In ~50% of “no experience” reports, detailed questioning revealed conscious awareness without specific, reportable content. 🧠 + 💤 👉 More on this in the coming months...

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Immersive dreaming may serve as an engrossing virtual simulation, similar to a Matrix, that shields the dreamer from potential sleep disruptions. This function may be essential for enabling sleep-dependent processes such as memory consolidation, which depend on transient neural reactivations.

We further show that perceived sleep depth increases progressively across the night, despite a physiological decline in both objective (slow-wave activity) and subjective (sleepiness) markers of sleep propensity. This divergence is explained by a parallel rise in dream immersiveness over time.

The deepest sleep is reported not only after unconscious states, but also following vividly immersive dreams. In contrast, minimal forms of consciousness lacking reportable mental content are consistently linked to the shallowest subjective sleep.

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We find that dreaming significantly alters the mapping between cortical activation and perceived sleep depth: the typical negative association between high-frequency activity and sleep depth is attenuated when richly immersive dream experiences occur.