Dreaming

An international team has created the largest-ever public database of brain activity and dream reports. A first analysis reveals that during deep-sleep dreams, the brain exhibits patterns resembling wakefulness.

A new study reports that dreams featuring supernatural events can influence a person’s daily feelings of closeness to God. Published in Frontiers in Psychology, the research shows this effect can be delayed by several days.

Sexual dreams often mirror waking psychological patterns. University students who scored higher in sensation seeking, extraversion, and neuroticism tended to report more vivid, joyful, or unusual sexual dreams, while anxiety and depression fueled more aversive and unsettling experiences.

People who score higher on neuroticism are more likely to experience frequent nightmares, according to research published in Dreaming.

A new study suggests that lucid dreaming might help people reduce fear by allowing them to confront frightening scenarios in their sleep. Participants who faced their fears during lucid dreams often reported feeling less afraid after waking up.

Bad dreams could be aging you from the inside out. Researchers have discovered that the nightly stress from nightmares may leave a mark on our DNA, accelerating biological aging and contributing to a significantly higher risk of premature death.

The belief that cheese causes nightmares is an old tale, recently revived in news headlines. A new study investigates this claim, revealing a genuine link. The story, however, is more complex than a simple slice of cheddar before bed.

An international study of over 15,000 adults across 16 countries found that dream recall and nightmares became more common during the pandemic, with sleep duration, age, and gender all playing a role in how often people experienced them.

A new study finds that emotional abuse and neglect during childhood are associated with more frequent nightmares and bad dreams in young adults. Rumination appears to mediate this link, and strong social support can weaken its impact on disturbed dreaming.

Lucid dreaming stands apart from both normal dreaming and wakefulness, according to a large EEG study. Researchers found that lucid dreams show unique brain activity patterns involving self-awareness, memory, and cognitive control—highlighting a complex state of consciousness within sleep.

After a loss, people often continue to feel the presence of the deceased—in dreams or even while awake, according to new psychological research.

Nightmares often follow a night of disrupted sleep, according to new research—but having a nightmare doesn’t necessarily cause worse sleep afterward.

People with dissociative symptoms often have fragmented, incoherent dreams, higher nightmare distress, and more lucid dreaming, suggesting that dream patterns and REM sleep disturbances are linked to a fragmented sense of self.

New research sheds light on why some individuals are more prone to frequent nightmares, pointing to thin psychological boundaries and a trait called nightmare proneness as significant factors.

Northwestern researchers found that a smartphone app using sensory cues significantly increased lucid dream frequency. Participants experienced nearly triple their usual rate of lucid dreams, showing that the Targeted Lucidity Reactivation method is effective outside the lab.