psychology research questions about dreams

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• Published: 02 October 2023

Evidence for an emotional adaptive function of dreams: a cross-cultural study

• David R. Samson 1 , 2 ,
• Alice Clerget 3 ,
• Noor Abbas 1 ,
• Jeffrey Senese 1 ,
• Mallika S. Sarma 4 ,
• Sheina Lew-Levy 5 ,
• Ibrahim A. Mabulla 6 ,
• Audax Z. P. Mabulla 6 ,
• Valchy Miegakanda 7 ,
• Francesca Borghese 3 ,
• Pauline Henckaerts 3 ,
• Sophie Schwartz 3 ,
• Virginie Sterpenich 3 ,
• Lee T. Gettler 8 ,
• Adam Boyette 5 ,
• Alyssa N. Crittenden 9 &
• Lampros Perogamvros 3 , 10 , 11  

Scientific Reports volume  13 , Article number:  16530 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Anthropology

The function of dreams is a longstanding scientific research question. Simulation theories of dream function, which are based on the premise that dreams represent evolutionary past selective pressures and fitness improvement through modified states of consciousness, have yet to be tested in cross-cultural populations that include small-scale forager societies. Here, we analyze dream content with cross-cultural comparisons between the BaYaka (Rep. of Congo) and Hadza (Tanzania) foraging groups and Global North populations, to test the hypothesis that dreams in forager groups serve a more effective emotion regulation function due to their strong social norms and high interpersonal support. Using a linear mixed effects model we analyzed 896 dreams from 234 individuals across these populations, recorded using dream diaries. Dream texts were processed into four psychosocial constructs using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) dictionary. The BaYaka displayed greater community-oriented dream content. Both the BaYaka and Hadza exhibited heightened threat dream content, while, at the same time, the Hadza demonstrated low negative emotions in their dreams. The Global North Nightmare Disorder group had increased negative emotion content, and the Canadian student sample during the COVID-19 pandemic displayed the highest anxiety dream content. In conclusion, this study supports the notion that dreams in non-clinical populations can effectively regulate emotions by linking potential threats with non-fearful contexts, reducing anxiety and negative emotions through emotional release or catharsis. Overall, this work contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary significance of this altered state of consciousness.

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Introduction.

Why do humans dream? As a product of the brain’s neurophysiology, our species can produce hallucinatory experiences during sleep. These dream experiences represent an altered state of consciousness. Why is it that we exhibit this altered state of consciousness rather than experiencing sleep in total perception quiescence? Research investigating dream content reveals that the dream state of consciousness, which is most often expressed in rapid-eye movement (REM), appears to be preoccupied with world simulation with content often reflecting the self’s social realities 1 , 2 , social networks 3 , 4 , and dangers 5 . Yet, whether dreams could enhance cognitive, affective, or social adaptation has been a question of active debate for decades.

A common framework for explaining the function of dreams is provided by simulation theories , which are based on the premise that dreams have a biological function and reflect selective pressures and fitness enhancement in the evolutionary past via altered states of consciousness 6 . Accordingly, dreams are credible real-world analogs 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 that prime the individual for corresponding contexts encountered in waking life. From this perspective, it has been argued that the phenotypic expression of dreaming could meet the necessary criteria for evolution by natural selection 15 .

Dream simulation and emotion regulation

Emerging work integrating neuroscience and dream content analysis suggests that emotional experiences are a crucial part of the virtual-world simulation of dreams and support an adaptive process that contributes to the resolution of emotional distress and preparation for future affective reactions 6 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 . In this context, the threat simulation theory 6 and social simulation theory 9 posit that dreams are biased to simulate threatening and social situations respectively. Such a mechanism would, in turn, promote adjusted behavioral responses in real-life situations 5 , 9 . Other studies have also supported the idea that past negative memories are reprocessed and combined in dreams with new, realistic, and safe contexts, suggesting the possibility of desensitization 20 , 21 or extinction 17 functions for dreaming. Functional dreams could thus expose us to threatening situations while providing us with efficient solutions to these situations. Such a process may facilitate the resolution of current social and emotional internal conflict 16 , 22 , a process also called emotional catharsis 23 , and the reduction of next-day negative mood 24 .

Together, these proposals and empirical observations suggest a potential core function of dreams via simulating distress in a safe environment to help process threats in beneficial ways; as such, functional dreams would strongly contribute to efficient emotion regulation in wakefulness 18 . These mechanisms seem to be impaired in clinical populations, such as patients with nightmare disorder 17 , 25 and anxiety disorders 26 —two pathologies characterized by less efficient fear extinction 17 , 27 .

Indeed, anxiety is considered a maladaptive emotional response implicating dysfunction of inhibitory (extinction) learning 27 , and the persistence of the fear response across time. We would thus expect that dreams with high levels of anxiety and negative emotions in the presence of a threat, as those found in clinical populations, would not serve the emotional processing function of dreams, as no emotional resolution is achieved. Critically, Revonsuo posited that the adaptive emotional function of dreams may be particularly relevant to contemporary small-scale societies facing routine ecological risks such as infectious disease and predation, as the emotional simulating mechanism would be fully activated in the face of the kinds of challenges within their environment 6 . Although there is some preliminary evidence for this argument 5 , 28 , 29 , such arguments have yet to be comparatively tested with large, multicultural datasets.

The importance of cross-cultural testing of dream content

The major challenge to the scientific investigation of dream function remains a sampling problem. To date, most dream studies have been conducted in the Global North—and primarily in the U.S. and European settings with samples of limited socio-economic and racial/ethnic breadth. Thus, one critical challenge to overcome limitations in past dream-based research, is to test the function of dreams by generating dream content variation among diverse populations’ socio-ecological experiences. This may be due in part to the interest of sleep researchers in pairing such work with sleep-based physiological techniques (i.e. polysomnography) that have been historically limited to lab settings (but see 30 for field-based methods in human biology and sleep research that are gaining momentum). While historically dreams have been the subject of anthropological investigation 28 , 31 , 32 , 33 , this ethnographic work is largely descriptive. Hence, much of the dream data are generated from studies that represent a very narrow range of human experiences for select populations (e.g., college undergraduates) at specific historical moments (e.g., between 1970 and 1990) in particular locations (e.g., U.S., Europe) and under similar societal and economic contexts (e.g., educated, high income).

There is a dearth of direct empirical tests of the evolutionary function of dreams, including comparative perspectives that would enable us to assess variation across cultural and ecological contexts in relation to dream content 9 . For example, smaller-scale societies that engage in mixed-subsistence foraging (i.e., hunt and gather for a large part of their diet), often differ from other smaller-scale societies in important ways. The depth and breadth of egalitarianism (i.e., cultural values and practices aimed at the treatment of all individuals as equal, often with norms around avoidance of prestige and hierarchy) in many sub-tropical foraging populations is intertwined with norms of cooperative pooling of time and energetic resources, such as to help provision and care for children 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 . Such forms of egalitarianism and extensive cooperation in resource sharing and family life are thought to be critical to survival and reproduction.

In contemporary populations, including the Hadza of Tanzania and BaYaka of the Republic of the Congo forager communities we focus on here, these cooperative subsistence and social dynamics necessarily place a strong emphasis on the importance of face-to-face supportive relationships for day-to-day health, well-being, and even survival 35 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 . These communities share some broad socioecological similarities in terms of (i) continuous environmental exposure to key stimuli—such as ambient light and temperature cues—known to drive circadian entrainment (e.g., circadian driven fluctuations have been shown to influence central characteristics of dream reports 50 ), (ii) gender divisions of foraging and household labor (though varying in their intensity between the BaYaka and Hadza), (iii) ecological risk in the form of predation exposure by way of large animals, pathogens and parasites, and (iv) norms regarding egalitarianism and generous resource sharing behaviors 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 51 , 52 .

The community-oriented interpersonal behaviors characteristic of BaYaka and Hadza and their maintenance require high degrees of emotion regulation and social problem solving. Unlike the experience of many individuals in populations from the Global North, these foragers’ daily interactions are repeated with the same network of cooperative partners throughout their lives. Additionally, although precise estimates are difficult to assess, mortality rates are relatively higher in subsistence-level societies compared to populations with better access to emergency care and biomedical treatment 41 —a factor that may be relevant in evaluating the possible threat simulation function of dreams. Thus, foragers may experience greater threat and community oriented responses to threat in their dreams. If an adaptive function of dreams is to reinforce or rehearse such day-to-day, prosocial (i.e., community-oriented) interactions, particularly with trusted kin, then people in BaYaka and Hadza communities will have a higher representation of those interactions and family members in their dreams than would typical populations in the Global North who reside in more individualistic societies.

Hypotheses and predictions

Here, we compare the dreams of two foraging communities—the BaYaka and Hadza—to non-clinical and clinical (i.e., with nightmares and social anxiety) populations from the Global North. First, because of their strong egalitarian social norms and high levels of daily face-to-face interpersonal support from trusted family and friends, we predict that the dream content of both forager groups will have a greater frequency of community-oriented behaviors when compared to dreamers in the Global North. Second, given that both forager groups experience greater early-to-midlife mortality—subsequently leading to a greater chance of an individual losing their own life, the life of offspring, kin, or friends—we predict a greater frequency of threat related dream content relevant to mortality. Third, we expect that foragers’ dreams will serve an efficient emotion regulation function, where threats are associated with new, non-fearful contexts/efficient solutions 17 , and, thus, with lower anxiety/negative emotions in dreams. Finally, we predict that the Nightmare group will have greater levels of negative emotions in dreams and that the student group, associated with COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the social anxiety group, will be characterized by greater anxiety in dream content. By comparing these groups, we can better understand the role of culture and environment in shaping the human experience of dreaming.

Material and methods

Participants.

In all, individuals from two sub-Saharan foraging egalitarian communities with low degrees of market integration, the Hadza and BaYaka and from three high income capitalistic populations (including non-clinical and clinical populations) totaling 234 participants contributed 896 dreams (see Table 1 for summary details).

Global North data collection and characteristics

Data from the Global North populations were drawn from previously published studies done in Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada. The Switzerland and Belgium samples were generated between 2014 and 2022 25 , 26 , 53 , 54 , 55 and included data from three groups: a non-patient group of young healthy participants, patients suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD), and patients suffering from nightmare disorder. Participants in these studies all kept the same sleep and dream diary (for details see 18 ). During the night or every morning, upon spontaneous awakening, the participants were asked to report whether they had a dream with or without recall or no dream at all. They also reported the presence of specific emotions thanks to dichotomous questions (presence/absence); in total, eleven emotions could be reported. A twelfth choice was reserved to the “absence of emotions”. In the last section of the dream diary, they were also asked to freely write down the dreams they had experienced during their sleep.

The non-clinical reference control group in the Global North includes 219 participants (123 females). A subset of 103 participants, aged between 16 and 40 years old (M = 22.1, SD = 7.9), had dream word counts equal to or greater than 20 words and were included in the dream analysis (word average per dream = 78.2, SD = 66.0). All participants followed a constant sleep schedule during the days preceding the experiment to assess the mean sleep duration and exclude any circadian disturbance or sleep disorder. People suffering from mental disorders were excluded. Ethical approval was granted by the committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Liege and by the Ethical Committee of the Canton of Geneva.

Dreams were also collected from patients suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD) according to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5) 26 , 56 . SAD is characterized by a persistent amount of fear when confronted with social situations 57 . Forty-eight subjects (32 females) were included in the final sample, after assessment of their social anxiety disorder level. The dream diary was filled every morning upon awakening for 2 weeks. Three hundred twenty-four (324) dream reports were collected (6.75 dreams per participant). A subset of 37 participants, aged between 16 and 40 years old (M = 24.4, SD =7.9), had dream word counts equal to or greater than 20 words and were included in the dream analysis (word average per dream = 76.9, SD = 56.7). Ethical approval was granted by the Ethical Committee of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland (“Commission Cantonale d’Ethique de la Recherche sur l’être humain”).

Additionally, dreams were collected in individuals suffering from nightmare disorder 25 . In total, 36 patients (27 females) were included. All of them suffered from nightmare disorder according to DSM5 with at least moderate severity (> 1 episode per week). Every morning upon awakening participants filled in a dream diary for 2 weeks. One hundred thirty-four (134) dream reports were collected (3.72 dreams per participant). A subset of 33 participants, aged from 20 to 35 years old (M = 26.3, SD = 8.4), had dream word counts equal to or greater than 20 words and were included in the dream analysis (word average per dream = 43.5, SD = 23.8). Ethical approval was granted by the Ethical Committee of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland (“Commission Cantonale d’Ethique de la Recherche sur l’être humain”).

Altogether, the Belgian and Swiss studies had 924 dream reports collected from the dream diary over 397 nights (4.2 dreams per participant on average). Of those dreams the number that were included in the final analysis with words counts equal to or above 20 are as follows: control N  = 356, Nightmare Disorder N  = 113, and SAD  = 184.

Students at the University of Toronto contributed dream reports ( N  = 184) collected during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the proliferation of COVID-19 variants was of major concern in Ontario, Canada, as announced by the Public Health Agency of Canada (Statistics Canada, 2021). In total, 24 students (21 females) aged from 19 to 25 years old (M = 21.9, SD = 5.5) were included. Ethics was approved and attained by the University of Toronto REB (RIS Human Protocol Number 39768). During this time, self-rated mental health was below national average (< 50%), and 82% of the Canadian population that were eligible for vaccination were fully vaccinated, however restrictions were still imposed in most areas, including mask-wearing, and limiting contacts. Thus, explorations of evolutionary theories on dream functions may have special relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic 58 , 59 . The final number of dreams equal to or above 20 words and included in the analysis was N  = 168 (word average per dream = 120.6, SD = 44.4).

Global South data collection and characteristics

Data were collected over different time periods by different experimenters. Hadza participants ( N  = 18) were surveyed by DRS in January and February of 2016 and BaYaka participants ( N  = 19) by AHB, SLL, VM, and MSS in June and July 2017. Hadza participants were aged between 18 and 68 years old (M = 42.7, SD = 8.5) and BaYaka participants were aged between 27 and 70 years old (M = 42.3, SD = 10). Combined, we collected a total of 101 dream reports (2.16 dreams per participant and a word average per dream = 38.7, SD = 18.9). The Hadza contributed 48 dream reports (female dreams = 12, male dreams = 36; word average per dream = 44.4, SD = 20.6); all Hadza dreams were equal to or greater than 20 words and were included in the analysis. The BaYaka ( N  = 19) contributed 53 dream reports (females dreams = 26, male dreams = 27); twenty-seven BaYaka dreams were equal to or greater than 20 words (word average per dream = 28.7, SD = 9.1) and were included in the analysis.

Dream reports were collected in the field using a modified Most Recent Dream (MRD) method 60 as a template for questionnaires, and in practice (as the indigenous populations could not write) were a daily verbally administered dream diary. The instructions, given by field researchers in morning after a sleep period, requested the participant to recall whether they dreamt the previous night. If subjects answered in the affirmative, they were then asked to recount the details of the dream using the MRD method template. The report was expected to be detailed, including a description of the dream's setting, the people involved (their age, sex, and relationship to the participant), and any animals present in the dream. Participants were also instructed to describe their emotions during the dream and whether it was a positive or negative experience. This method is ideal for use in small-scale societies because it is a fast, inexpensive, and reliable way to obtain large samples of dream reports. For both forager groups, dream content was translated by the aid of a multilingual field assistant at the time the dream was recorded. Importantly, it is essential to note that, as both the MRD modified and verbally administered dream diary (Global South) and the classic Dream Diary method (Global North) recorded dreams of the previous night, they shared a similar approach and were directly comparable. Additionally, both were administered shortly after awakening from sleep on the same day as the dream, thereby minimizing potential memory biases 61 .

For work with the Hadza, IRB approval was granted from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2014) and verbal consent for participation was asked to each participant in Swahili, the second language of the Hadza community. All research was performed with approval of the government of Tanzania, via the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) and the Tanzanian National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR). For the BaYaka, village council consent for this study was obtained at a community meeting in 2015. Subsequently, community consent was annually renewed. Verbal consent was provided by each participant following recruitment into this study. Approval to conduct research in the Republic of the Congo was given by The Centre de Recherche et D’Edudes en Sciences Sociales et Humaines. Ethics approval was obtained from Duke University (2017), the University of Notre Dame (2017), and the University of Cambridge (2017).

All methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations, and informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Dream text analysis

LIWC-22 is an acronym for Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, and it is a text analysis software program that can return results for up to 90 different variables or categories 62 . The English text analysis strategy employed the LIWC-22 Dictionary. This internal dictionary is comprised of over 12,000 words, phrases, and emoticons, which have been carefully selected and categorized into sub-dictionaries to assess various psychosocial constructs. Essentially, the LIWC-22 software program is designed to map linguistic constructions to important psychosocial theories and constructs, and thus, target words contained in texts that are read and analyzed by LIWC-22 are used for this purpose.

In this study, the dream texts were translated and transcribed into English, and preprocessed into four super-categories— Community-oriented (by grouping the LIWC categories: social, family, moral, friend, and prosocial) , Threat (by grouping the LIWC categories: conflict and death) , Negative emotions (encompassing the category: negative emotions), and Anxiety (encompassing the category: anxiety). To create an outcome variable for statistical models (see section ‘Modelling' ), we summed the number of words of each category in each dream text. Examples of the Community-oriented target words were: care, help, thank, please, parent, mother, father, baby, honor, deserve, judge, you, we, he, she. Examples of the Threat target words were: fight, killed, attack, death, dead, die, kill. Examples of the Negative emotions target words were: bad, hate, hurt, tired. Examples of the Anxiety target words were: worry, fear, afraid, nervous. The LIWC-22 Dictionary provides a systematic and reliable approach to text analysis 63 and has been widely used in other word-based dream content analyses 25 , 64 , 65 .

To assess the predictors of the four response variable categories ( Community-oriented, Threat, Negative emotions, Anxiety dream content) by population (BaYaka, Hadza, Nightmare, SAD, Students, and Control) we used a linear mixed effects model, built using the lme4 package and model averaged using the MuMin package 66 . To normalize the count data for each category, we square root transformed the response variable 67 , 68 . Finally, we made statistical inferences using a combination of standardized coefficients, confidence intervals, and p-values. We controlled for the fixed effects of age, number of dream reports, word count and sex as well as subject ID (to control for repeated measures) as a random effect. After assessing information criterion, models including the number of dream reports and age as fixed effects differed little from models without them, and so we removed them from final analysis. To increase the power of the model to identify the predicted patterns in the data, we obtained coefficients based on optimization of the log-likelihood using shrinkage, which incorporates measurement error into the regression model and improves less certain estimates by pooling information from more certain estimates 69 .

The non-patient sample from the Global North was used as a model reference category (i.e., a group that is used as a point of comparison for other groups in a statistical analysis) so effect-size estimates for each population are predicted differences in counts of dream content compared to this sample.

The dream content models were fit as follows:

The full dataset, along with all meta-data and more detail of each variable, is available in the Open Science Framework (OSF) data repository:  https://osf.io/7n6kf/ .

Community-oriented’ dream content is greatest in BaYaka

Amongst all sampled populations, the BaYaka showed greater community-oriented dream content than all group samples from Global North populations and Hadza population, after adjusting for sex, word count, and subject ID. As shown in Table 2 , and displayed in Fig.  1 , after factor correction, the BaYaka sample positively drives community-oriented dream content. Additionally, women’s dream reports and word count were drivers of the response variable (Table 2 ). As ethnographic data, we present a few such examples here:

‘I was walking in the forest with my two adult daughters and found a porcupine in a trap and brought it back to the village to eat it. It was a good dream’ ‘I was net hunting with my family (including extended family camp) and we caught many animals so he had to make a smoker "bota" to smoke all of them’

Prosocial dream estimates plot.

‘Threat’ dream content is greatest in BaYaka and Hadza

After adjusting for sex, word count, and controlling for repeated measures of the subject ID, both the BaYaka and Hadza samples had higher levels of threat dream content compared to the Global North groups. This is shown in Table 3 and depicted in Fig.  2 . Thus, belonging to the BaYaka or Hadza community is associated with a greater probability of experiencing threatening dream content. No other factors were found to significantly influence threat dream content.

Threat dream estimates plot.

Importantly, several dream reports gathered among the Hadza community demonstrated high threat situation to which a positive, emotionally cathartic resolution was found. For example:

‘I dreamt I was being chased by a herd of elephants; I was in Nyanza, which is open flat savanna land. I ran and found a small cave which was too small for the elephants to follow. I escaped’. ‘I was chased by an elephant in the bush around camp. I was with four unfamiliar women. I escaped by running into the mountains’. ‘I dreamt I was in the forest and the military was chasing me with guns and he climbed a tree to get away.’ ‘I was chased by a leopard in nearby mountains. I began by hunting but realized that I was the hunted. I was alone but I escaped’.

Moreover, in some Hadza dream reports, a solution to a threat was found through social support:

'I dreamt I fell into a well that is near the Hukumako area by the Dtoga people. I was with two others and one of my friends helped me get out of the well.' ‘I dreamt a buffalo hit me. I was in Numbeya bushland where we look for honey. I was looking for the "small honey". There was another man called January and he came and helped me’ ‘I dreamt a Toga not from this camp (who) took a knife and a person he didn't know from another camp. After I told the guy to stop, he left our Sengele camp.’

'Negative emotion’ dream content is greatest in Nightmare disorder sample

After adjusting for sex, word count, and subject ID, the sample of patients from the Global North in the Nightmare Disorder group had higher levels of dream content with negative emotions compared to the reference group (Table 4 and Fig.  3 ). Conversely, the Hadza exhibited significantly fewer negative emotion words in their dream content than the reference group. No other groups differed from the reference group, as shown in Table 4 and depicted in Fig.  3 . The following dream reports demonstrate high fear without resolution in the Nightmare Disorder group:

‘My mom would call me on my phone and ask me to put it on speakerphone so my sister and cousin could hear. Crying she announced to us that my little brother was dead. I was screaming in sadness and crying in pain.’ ‘I was with my boyfriend, our relationship was perfect and I felt completely fulfilled. Then he decided to abandon me, which awoke in me a deep feeling of despair and anguish.’ ‘I remember in my dream is that I was sitting at a table, in one of the secret rooms, across from a middle-aged man who said he was my uncle (he did not look like any of my uncles), and he was over 100 years old but looked like he was in his 50s. He looked like evil characters from movies. He said he was going to kill me after he went to speak with other people in the other room to admit his secret and then come to kill me. After he left the room, I got up and saw that the door was not fully closed. My thought was that I had to go fight him and then I woke up before I could approach the door.

Negative emotions dream estimates plot.

‘Anxiety’ dream content is greatest in the Canadian (COVID-19 pandemic era) student sample

After accounting for sex, the word count and participant repeated measures by subject ID, it was found that the student group had more anxiety dream content compared to the reference group. Table 5 and Fig.  4 indicate that no other groups demonstrated a significant difference from the control group. In the following two examples, the dream scenario illustrates the level of anxiety that the subject experiences as he needs to confront challenges alone:

‘The dream I remember relates to a game that I play. As it only involved myself, there was no one that I knew around, and I remember feeling anxious. I was doing a very difficult mini-game in the game where a bunch of non-player characters were all around me and I needed to hide behind obstacles to stay safe. I remember waking up once I died inside the mini-game’

Anxiety dream estimates plot.

Contrary to one of our predictions, no significant differences between the non-clinical group and the Social Anxiety Disorder group were found about the level of anxiety experienced in dreams. However, some dreams illustrate the social isolation these patients are experiencing in their real life, translated by a lack of social support when dangers arise:

‘I was in an elevator, stuck, alone. I pressed the down button, and then the elevator sped down. I was very scared, I tried to set off the emergency bell. I arrived at the bottom, it was dark and a sheet or blanket fell from the ceiling of the elevator to cover me.’

In other dreams of this group, people are regarded as hostile, which eventually increases the anxiety level:

‘I dreamed that I ran into someone I knew at the supermarket. We collided without excusing each other which led to an open conflict. The person in question threatens me, I go to the manager of the store accusing the person of having stolen something (it's not true). Then we walk out of the store and the other begs me to drop my charge of theft. I tell him that I won't go any further and that the newspapers won't know anything because I'm a journalist. The person's mother picks him up. I walk a bit until we go to their place. I explain to the person that I have the feeling of being followed by a man who looks like a shadow, and who watches over me and waits for the moment to seize me. I then understand that this man is death himself!’ ‘In my dream, I was at my high school. I went into the classroom by myself and two friends (female, 18) that I thought were close to me started isolating me during group work. I worked by myself the entire class while they acted aggressively towards me, at least verbally. I pulled out my chair to go submit my assignment and it hit a person behind me (male, 18). This person is a friend from my primary school. He shouted at me even though I tried to explain to him what happened was just an accident. I used the washroom, and my phone was water-damaged by one of the two girls (may or may not be an accident). I asked her to pay me back, but subconsciously I did not want the refund but instead to have an excuse to hold a conversation with her. It was an unpleasant dream because I thought I was close to them.’

In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that dreams serve an emotional function that is potentially adaptive by examining dream content from Hadza and BaYaka foragers, who belong to communities characterized by high levels of interpersonal support coupled with greater early-to-midlife mortality (due to predation, resource stress, food and water insecurity, and disease) in comparison to populations in the Global North. We found partial support to the first prediction, that forager dreams exhibit greater community-oriented dream content. Of all the populations examined, only BaYaka reported dreams with significantly more frequent content related to community-orientation and social support amongst family and friends (Table 2 and Fig.  1 ).

The second prediction, that foragers’ dreams contain more threat related content was supported. Both the BaYaka and Hadza samples demonstrated a greater frequency of mortality and conflict associated dream content compared to the reference group, whereas the other groups did not show such difference (Table 3 and Fig.  2 ). The prediction that dreams may augment the processing of high threat levels, yet also be characterized by low levels of both anxiety and negative emotions—was supported. The BaYaka exhibited levels of negative emotions in dreams that did not differ from the reference group, while the Hadza exhibited significantly less dream content with negative emotions compared to the reference. As expected, the Nightmare Disorder group also exhibited significantly greater levels of negative emotions in dreams (Table 4 and Fig.  3 ). A similar pattern was found with anxiety dream content, where the student group during the COVID-19 pandemic was characterized by significantly greater anxiety dream content compared to the reference group, while the BaYaka and Hadza did not differ compared to the reference group (Table 5 and Fig.  4 ).

Evidence for an emotional function of dreams in small-scale forager populations

BaYaka and Hadza foragers face several specific hazards. BaYaka communities reside in a rainforest ecology in the Congo Basin, where routine hazards (i.e., specific sources of danger include: (i) intergroup conflict with Bantu fisher-farmers due to perceived trade and labor related debt, (ii) illnesses (malaria, tuberculosis, intestinal parasites), and (iii) extrinsic risks (i.e., broader factors that can increase a person’s overall risk of harm or negative outcomes) of everyday life, including encounters with dangerous animals like snakes, elephants, crocodiles, and gorillas while hunting, fishing, and foraging as well as other hazardous aspects of the forest such as falling limbs/trees and falls while climbing 70 . The BaYaka infant mortality rate in the study region is unknown, but (as measured elsewhere in the region) can be inferred to be around 20 percent 41 . Adult and juvenile mortality is generally relatively high compared to populations with better access to emergency care and biomedical treatment, though precise estimates are currently unknown 41 . A study of death among the Aka in the Central African Republic found that infections and parasitic diseases were the most common causes of death across ages, causing 22 percent of 669 deaths, and diarrhea causing another 21 percent of deaths 71 .

The Hadza reside in a diverse ecological region characterized by rolling hills, grasslands, and acacia commiphora woodland. Hazards for the Hadza include (i) intergroup conflict with the Datoga pastoralists who co-reside in some areas of the landscape and keep large herds of cattle and goats that drink the scare water in the water holes during the dry season and eat much of the vegetation needed to support wildlife, (ii) illnesses (e.g. tuberculosis, malaria, viral diarrhea) that are faced with little access to biomedical treatment, and (iii) extrinsic risks of everyday life that include falling from trees when collecting honey, snakebites, and encounters with predators when hunting or scavenging meat 48 . One study showed that out of 75 deaths, a third of deaths were attributed to illness, with age, childbirth, poisoning or bewitching and homicide, and falling from trees as other causes of death 72 . With respect to mortality, 21% of infants die in the first year of life and 46% of juvenile children die by age 15 72 , 73 .

Comparatively, populations of the Global North face other types of threats and share different sociocultural values than individuals from small-scale societies. In contrast to collectivistic cultures, like BaYaka and Hadza, most societies of the Global North are strongly individualistic and competitive 74 . People in these societies have less routine face-to-face contact with and imperative cooperative reliance on broad kin networks. At the same time, this individualism shapes many common threats, which are mostly connected to social life (e.g., ostracism and exclusion, loss of status, shame, failure in an exam, etc.), and which are mostly experienced at an individual rather at a collective level. Although recent austerity plans resulted in the reemergence of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity in European and American countries 75 , economic development, public health infrastructure, and access to biomedical care have been linked to comparatively greater life expectancies in the Global North (e.g. 77 years in the U.S. and 80 years in the E.U.), with a larger proportion of deaths occurring in older age from chronic conditions 76 , 76 , 78 .

The present findings provide evidence that when compared to populations in the Global North, foragers disclose a prevalence of community-orientation in their waking life as well as the socially connected themes in their dreams, which may support emotional health. Specifically, our analysis suggests that even in the context of threat, community-orientation—expressed by strong social networks that rely daily on mutual assistance in the context of strong egalitarian social norms—may also play an important role in providing strategies to overcome threats and ultimately achieve emotion regulation. Importantly, an interpretation of BaYaka and Hadza dreams is that foragers activate both the threat simulation and extinction functions of dreaming, which may result in resolution of these threats within their dreams.

The dysfunctional nature of nightmares

We claim here, in line with other theoretical concepts 17 , that increased threat in dreams (as compared to dreams from healthy controls) does not seem to be functional without a subsequent emotional resolution. For example, patients with nightmare disorder have dreams characterized by recurrent, intense, and highly threatening content that cause significant distress and impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning 56 . Nightmares are dreams with high threat but insufficient emotional resolution. The dreamer cannot find effective solutions for threats, therefore high fear and anxiety impedes emotion regulation and catharsis. According to the threat simulation theory, individuals possess a threat simulation system by which multiple factors (such as, inherited personality traits, threat input throughout adolescent development, current stress levels and recent threat input) regulate dream phenotypes. These inputs can also be attenuated by strong social support networks and egalitarian norms. Previous work has suggested that threatening content in dreams ultimately serve to strengthen waking threat perception skills and threat avoidance behaviors that help to self-cope with the challenging realities of waking life 6 , 8 , 79 , 80 .

The forager data further supports the idea that overcoming threat by way of adaptive emotional responses (in wake or sleep) is a crucial component of an efficient emotion regulation in the face of stressful events. When the presence of threats in dreams is not associated with subsequent emotional resolution, as in recurrent nightmares, dreams seem to lose their emotional processing function. Our results, along with others 81 , 82 , 83 suggest that nightmares are dysfunctional dreams with high threat simulation coupled with lack of fear extinction.

Dreams in situations of social isolation or social anxiety

Contrary to the community-oriented character of the BaYaka population, and similar to the increased negative emotions found in nightmares, the dream reports collected from students during the pandemic era were characterized by high levels of anxiety, and sometimes these manifested with themes of isolation and having to confront challenges alone (as depicted in the dream text examples in the “ Results ” section). For example, dreamers experienced high anxiety because of the presence of hostile people in the narrative, without finding any positive way to deal with such a threat. Our results suggest that dreams of individuals in situations of social isolation or social anxiety do not seem to achieve a sufficient degree of emotional resolution (see also 26 ). Whether there is a causal relationship between such a deficient extinction function of dreaming and the symptomatology of anxiety disorders is not clearly elucidated and should be further tested in the future.

Limitations

There are several limitations to the current study, particularly in regard to the dream content collection among the BaYaka and Hadza populations. Future dream research in such small-scale societies should emphasize not only generating dream data but also including daily reports of activity or evidence of daytime emotion regulation or performance 18 . Accounts for waking life experiences enable a direct analysis of dreams to experiences encountered during the day, which would then allow to test threat or social simulation hypotheses or to make claims related to these hypotheses in general 60 . Correlational studies, such as the one conducted by Sterpenich and colleagues 18 , or interventional studies (i.e., manipulating dream content and observing its effect in wakefulness 25 ) offer a closer approximation of the relationship between wake and dream functions. Importantly, observational dream research, including the present study, cannot claim to provide strong evidence for causality between wakefulness and dreams, nor for the directionality of such relationship regarding emotion regulation functions. Finally, as both a point of originality for this work and in distinction from previous work, this study did not test for the daytime emotional state-response, as emotional resolution was assessed in the dream itself.

Dream reports with greater length are more likely to contain sufficient information to accurately describe a dream 29 . Yet, some dream reports from both of these communities were relatively short in length. This can be attributed to dream recounting having to be translated and transcribed into English. Although we made efforts to recount as much detail as possible, dream descriptions could only be paraphrased summaries of dreams distilled through the translator. In addition, it is difficult to assess whether the participant recounting his/her dream was motivated and/or had sufficient practice formulating accurate long-term memories of the dream. Often, inexperienced dream recounters simply answer the questionnaire as is presented to them, which can attribute to dream report bias 80 . Despite the short dream descriptions and less formalized training in dream recounting, the BaYaka and Hadza communities are characterized by a rich storytelling culture and were typically highly motivated to discuss dreams and their interpretations. We also note that these samples are characterized by a stark lack of sexually related activity in dreams. It may well be that for these groups, the lack of recounting dreams of a sexual nature may reflect a taboo placed on descriptions of sexuality in general.

Here we provide support for the idea that in non-clinical populations with real and perceived threats, dreams may process high threat levels, yet also be characterized by low anxiety and negative emotions. Our results suggest indirectly that dreams can effectively regulate emotions by linking potential dangers with novel, non-fearful dream contexts and can lead to a reduction in feelings of anxiety and other negative emotions, as a form of emotional release or catharsis. In addition, in at least one such community (the BaYaka), emotional catharsis is often achieved by strong social support. Ultimately, if dreaming prepares human beings to face likely challenges and dangers in waking life, then our results are among the first to show these potential functions under evolutionarily relevant socio-ecological conditions.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are publicly available on OSF ( https://osf.io/7n6kf/ ). 

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank both the Hadza and BaYaka for participating in this study. We would like to thank Dambo Justin and Mékouno Paul for assistance with data collection in Congo. We would like to thank Jarno Tuominien for useful discussions and Audrey Theux for technical assistance. This project was funded by the National Geographic Society (no. 9665-15 to DS), the Jacobs Foundation (to LG and AB), the Medical Direction of University Hospitals of Geneva (PRD 18-2019-I to LP) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (CRSK-3_190722 to LP).

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Conceptualization: D.S. and L.P. Methodology, software: D.S., A.C., L.P. Data curation: D.S., A.C., N.A., J.S., M.S.S., S. L-L., F.B., P.H., V.S., L.T.G., A.B., A.N.C., L.P. Writing—original draft preparation: D.S. and L.P. Visualization, investigation: D.S., S. L-L., S.S., V.S., L.T.G., A.B., A.N.C., L.P. Supervision: D.S. and L.P. Funding acquisition: D.S., S. L-L., L.T.G., A.B., A.N.C., L.P. Writing—reviewing and editing: D.S., A.C., N.A., J.S., M.S.S., S. L-L., F.B., P.H., S.S., V.S., L.T.G., A.B., A.N.C., L.P.

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Samson, D.R., Clerget, A., Abbas, N. et al. Evidence for an emotional adaptive function of dreams: a cross-cultural study. Sci Rep 13 , 16530 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-43319-z

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July 26, 2011

The Science Behind Dreaming

New research sheds light on how and why we remember dreams--and what purpose they are likely to serve

By Sander van der Linden

Getty Images

For centuries people have pondered the meaning of dreams. Early civilizations thought of dreams as a medium between our earthly world and that of the gods. In fact, the Greeks and Romans were convinced that dreams had certain prophetic powers. While there has always been a great interest in the interpretation of human dreams, it wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put forth some of the most widely-known modern theories of dreaming. Freud’s theory centred around the notion of repressed longing -- the idea that dreaming allows us to sort through unresolved, repressed wishes. Carl Jung (who studied under Freud) also believed that dreams had psychological importance, but proposed different theories about their meaning.

Since then, technological advancements have allowed for the development of other theories. One prominent neurobiological theory of dreaming is the “activation-synthesis hypothesis,” which states that dreams don’t actually mean anything: they are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and imagery from our memories. Humans, the theory goes, construct dream stories after they wake up, in a natural attempt to make sense of it all. Yet, given the vast documentation of realistic aspects to human dreaming as well as indirect experimental evidence that other mammals such as cats also dream, evolutionary psychologists have theorized that dreaming really does serve a purpose. In particular, the “threat simulation theory” suggests that dreaming should be seen as an ancient biological defence mechanism that provided an evolutionary advantage because of  its capacity to repeatedly simulate potential threatening events – enhancing the neuro-cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and avoidance.

So, over the years, numerous theories have been put forth in an attempt to illuminate the mystery behind human dreams, but, until recently, strong tangible evidence has remained largely elusive.

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Yet, new research published in the Journal of Neuroscience provides compelling insights into the mechanisms that underlie dreaming and the strong relationship our dreams have with our memories. Cristina Marzano and her colleagues at the University of Rome have succeeded, for the first time, in explaining how humans remember their dreams. The scientists predicted the likelihood of successful dream recall based on a signature pattern of brain waves. In order to do this, the Italian research team invited 65 students to spend two consecutive nights in their research laboratory.

During the first night, the students were left to sleep, allowing them to get used to the sound-proofed and temperature-controlled rooms. During the second night the researchers measured the student’s brain waves while they slept. Our brain experiences four types of electrical brain waves: “delta,” “theta,” “alpha,” and “beta.” Each represents a different speed of oscillating electrical voltages and together they form the electroencephalography (EEG). The Italian research team used this technology to measure the participant’s brain waves during various sleep-stages. (There are five stages of sleep; most dreaming and our most intense dreams occur during the REM stage.) The students were woken at various times and asked to fill out a diary detailing whether or not they dreamt, how often they dreamt and whether they could remember the content of their dreams.

While previous studies have already indicated that people are more likely to remember their dreams when woken directly after REM sleep, the current study explains why. Those participants who exhibited more low frequency theta waves in the frontal lobes were also more likely to remember their dreams.

This finding is interesting because the increased frontal theta activity the researchers observed looks just like the successful encoding and retrieval of autobiographical memories seen while we are awake. That is, it is the same electrical oscillations in the frontal cortex that make the recollection of episodic memories (e.g., things that happened to you) possible. Thus, these findings suggest that the neurophysiological mechanisms that we employ while dreaming (and recalling dreams) are the same as when we construct and retrieve memories while we are awake.

In another recent study conducted by the same research team, the authors used the latest MRI techniques to investigate the relation between dreaming and the role of deep-brain structures. In their study, the researchers found that vivid, bizarre and emotionally intense dreams (the dreams that people usually remember) are linked to parts of the amygdala and hippocampus. While the amygdala plays a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the hippocampus has been implicated in important memory functions, such as the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory.

The proposed link between our dreams and emotions is also highlighted in another recent study published by Matthew Walker and colleagues at the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at UC Berkeley, who found that a reduction in REM sleep (or less “dreaming”) influences our ability to understand complex emotions in daily life – an essential feature of human social functioning.  Scientists have also recently identified where dreaming is likely to occur in the brain.  A very rare clinical condition known as “Charcot-Wilbrand Syndrome” has been known to cause (among other neurological symptoms) loss of the ability to dream.  However, it was not until a few years ago that a patient reported to have lost her ability to dream while having virtually no other permanent neurological symptoms. The patient suffered a lesion in a part of the brain known as the right inferior lingual gyrus (located in the visual cortex). Thus, we know that dreams are generated in, or transmitted through this particular area of the brain, which is associated with visual processing, emotion and visual memories.

Taken together, these recent findings tell an important story about the underlying mechanism and possible purpose of dreaming.

Dreams seem to help us process emotions by encoding and constructing memories of them. What we see and experience in our dreams might not necessarily be real, but the emotions attached to these experiences certainly are. Our dream stories essentially try to strip the emotion out of a certain experience by creating a memory of it. This way, the emotion itself is no longer active.  This mechanism fulfils an important role because when we don’t process our emotions, especially negative ones, this increases personal worry and anxiety. In fact, severe REM sleep-deprivation is increasingly correlated to the development of mental disorders. In short, dreams help regulate traffic on that fragile bridge which connects our experiences with our emotions and memories.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas .

Speaking of Psychology: The science of dreaming, with Deirdre Barrett, PhD

We all dream yet many of us don’t know what to make of our nocturnal adventures. Dream scholar Deirdre Barrett, PhD, explains why we dream and what our dreams may be trying to tell us. She also offers tips on how to better remember your dreams to harness the power of your sleeping mind.

About the expert: Deirdre Barrett, PhD

Kaitlin Luna: Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast from the American Psychological Association. I'm your host Kaitlin Luna. Our guest for this episode is Dr. Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist and scholar of dreams who's on the faculty of Harvard Medical School's Behavioral Medicine Program. She's the editor of the journal Dreaming and has written several books on the topic including the Committee of Sleep . Thank you for joining us, Dr. Barrett.

Deirdre Barrett: Hi, nice to be here.

Kaitlin Luna: So dreams are always a fascinating topic. We all dream but many people don't remember them or don't really know what to do with their dreams and you, as a scholar of dreams, know all about dreams and are even a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. So I'll start off with, I think, a simple question with probably a long answer but why do we dream?

Deirdre Barrett: Well it's not a simple question it's probably the one where you'd get the most disagreement among dream psychologists. Personally I think that we have rapid eye movement sleep which is the stage in which most dreams occur along with all mammals for a lot of reasons many of which are very biological that certain neurotransmitters are being replenished in the brain during that stage of sleep that there's some very physical body reasons for REM that we share with all mammals. But I think evolution isn't that simple and when something's been around since the dawn of mammals it tends to have function upon function layered on top of it and I think for humans there's a lot of problem-solving that goes on in that state but that's my answer and you would get everywhere from you know it has no function, to you know dreams are sort of our wiser self speaking to us from other dream psychologists. But that's my that's my concept of it.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah I mean I've always thought of it as sort of like it's telling you something, you know your dreams are trying to you tell you something you have been avoiding or something you might not realize what's going on because it's really you are unconscious so I've always wondered if it's really your sort of true self coming out so I'm probably maybe in that camp just as a lay person just being interested in the study of dreams.

Deirdre Barrett: Yeah I mean I like to say it's just it's our brain thinking in a different biochemical state and I don't buy into the perspective that…there's one book called Dreams are Wiser than Men , I don't think that what our dream dreaming mind is thinking about an issue is always the correct one or wiser than our waking one, I think the benefit of dreams lie in just what a different biochemical state it is so if we're kind of stuck in our usual everyday rational thinking, dreams may make an end run around that and show us something very different. But if you had to operate off one or the other I think our waking mind is probably giving us you know more good advice than our dreaming one, but the dream is a great supplement.

Kaitlin Luna: Absolutely and can you explain a bit about what the International Association for the Study of Dreams does?

Deirdre Barrett: It's a nonprofit organization whose mission is just to disseminate information about dreams and that's everything from the most basic education about things that have been known about dreams for a long time to the general public and even to children on to disseminating the latest research between professionals in the field. The ISD has one international conference a year, it has some online virtual conferences, it has some regional conferences and it has two publications. I edit the journal Dreaming which ISD oversees the content, but APA is our publisher and that is an academic journal for professionals in the field. But ISD also has another publication called Dream Time which is a magazine which is much more informal discussion of dreams that the general public can enjoy.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah, it's very interesting. Until I was researching this topic I didn't know there was such an association.

Deirdre Barrett: Yeah, it's a great group. I recommend its website and for anyone that can get there its conferences are great and unlike many organizations it's a combination of professionals and not professionals so at the conference more than half the presenters and about half the attendees are some kind of professional in the field but there are lots of people who are just extremely dream interested who choose to come to the conference.

Kaitlin Luna: Interesting maybe I'll end up there one day. So, you know, there's those common dreams that I think you know you read about see in television and movies and people talk about like being in a public place naked or having your teeth fall out or being chased. So why do different people have similar dreams. I've always found that question really interesting, like why would I have the same dream as some random person from a you know different walk of life and has there been research into those common themes?

Deirdre Barrett: Well there's some research just on how frequently they occur and that does demonstrate that a few of those themes including the ones you rattled off do occur pretty frequently to people of different ages and around the world. Some are more universal than others and it tends to go with whether the metaphor they seem to be representing is universal. Clearly all cultures have some norms about what parts of your body you're supposed to cover and not even if it's you know a tiny thong just covering your genitals in one culture and bailing you know from head to toe in another one, there's still a how much of your body do you show and shame around showing more than you're supposed to be. So that the naked in public one seems to be quite universal and I'll say more a bit later about this, but we certainly don't think that you should ever just say one dream theme means exactly the same thing for anyone that dreams it. There's always an individual element. But there's some things like naked in public that are much likelier to be representing social shame, social anxieties you know just the common-sense metaphor about being exposed in some uncomfortable way is usually what that dream is about for most of the people having it. Then there are other common themes that are a little more cultural bound like most Western societies with our kind of schooling many, many people in the culture have recurring dreams about tests going wrong, you've overslept, you've missed the test, you aren't figuring out what the classroom is, you're late, you can't find the classroom, you get into the exam you realize you studied the wrong subject for it, the exam’s in hieroglyphics, they're just all kinds of variations. But somehow you are you know about to mess up a test. And we see that in Western schooling type cultures all the time, but you don't see that in hunter-gatherer tribes where, you know, learning to get out there and do adult tasks in some sort of, you know, more intern like way is the way that they're educated and test obviously they don't have sit-down exam dreams. And even in our culture people who decide to be want to be actors or musicians from an early age, they'll have a variation that's the audition dream. They're not sitting down to take an exam but they're showing up with their musical instrument and they realize they've studied the wrong piece of music or they can't find the audition hall so there's some variation even in those standard ones but there's something to the idea that there's some universal, very frequent dreams meaning something similar for most people who have them.

Kaitlin Luna: And those feelings behind those dreams could be, like you said, maybe some sort of shame or some sort of anxiety about what's going to happen to be tested in some way that sort of thing. So they're common feelings that underlie them.

Deirdre Barrett: Well yeah, different shades for different ones but just in line with what otherwise are common metaphors you know if you “feel exposed” or “feel naked”, that's usually more of a shame social disapproval. If you’re being tested, you know that's more of an authority figure is evaluating you sort of are you measuring up you know to society in general or in authority? So most of the recurring themes dreams are anxiety dreams but whether it's about sort of being competent versus being socially appropriate those tend to be represented by different specific things.

Kaitlin Luna:  I've heard that some people say that dreams don't mean anything at all that they're just random impulses from your brain when you're sleeping or perhaps just, you know, consolidating memories, that sort of thing, and that there's no deeper emotional meaning behind them. But, you know, many people do believe dreams are important, that they help problem-solve, perhaps find inspiration which I'll ask about in a few minutes, but what does the psychological research say about the importance of dreams and do we know what would happen if we didn't dream?

Deirdre Barrett: Well let me answer the first part first, it's a little simpler. There is some research, there's a limit to how much you can deprive people of REM sleep and it does have to be depriving of REM sleep, not quite all dreams happen in REM sleep and one of the things that you see if you deprive people of REM sleep is that you begin to get more reports that sound like full-fledged dream narratives out of other stages of sleep. A few of those happen anyway but it's like there's some pressure to dream that if you don't let it happen in rapid eye movement sleep it begins to happen in other stages of sleep. And then in the extreme, in some of the experiments people seemed to hallucinate awake a little bit. So there's certainly a pressure to dream that can sort of break out of REM not that it's always totally confined there. But the other thing is if you’re REM depriving people you see deficits in certain things or it doesn't even have to be REM deprivation, but you can do an experiment where the same amount of time passes between exposure to a task and retrying it and people either do or don't get a REM episode in there. And from those experiments it looks like other stages of sleep have more to do with consolidating some simple straightforward kinds of memory and that rapid eye movement sleep is consolidating and learning more emotionally-tinged memories and certain kinds of problem-solving that require some abstract generalization, from answers to single cases and beginning to see a pattern across them, that people that get a REM period in between exposure to certain problem-solving tasks do better. So that's REM sleep and that's not talking about the dream content but we definitely, in dream content we sometimes see very overt problem-solving pop up somebody doesn't know the answer to a question until they have a dream that shows them the solution so REM is doing something with that biologically whether you're remembering dream content with it or not but again layered on top of REM for human beings dreams seem to be the about the problems and issues we've just been exposed to and sometimes solving them.

Kaitlin Luna: Speaking about what you just mentioned about how people use them to problem-solve or get inspiration and you wrote about in your book, The Committee of Sleep , about some stories from famous artists and inventors like Paul McCartney, Salvador Dali and the inventor of the sewing machine how they received inspiration from their dreams which produced beautiful works of art and practical tools like the sewing machine. Can you explain how we use dreams to problem-solve and to find inspiration?

Deirdre Barrett: Yes, I mean there are two aspects of that. One is that it simply happens spontaneously a fair bit that people who are stuck on a problem will have a breakthrough dream and that was true in the case of the sewing machine inventor that that dream came out of nowhere without his asking for it in any particular way and showed him how to make the sewing machine. And two kinds of problems are likelier to get solved spontaneously in dreams. One is anything that's a very visual-spatial because dreams are so visual we can see things in a hallucinatory way in front of us so the first computer-controlled anti-aircraft gun was dreamed, the sewing machine was dreamed, the structure of the benzene molecule was dreamed and all of those seemed to be cases where being able to see the thing very much more clearly than you could just do visual imagination awake was a helpful part of it. The other big cluster of solved-by dreams are where you're stuck because the conventional wisdom is wrong. The benzene molecule is an example of both. Kekulé knew what the atoms in benzene were but at that time all known molecules were some kind of straight line with a side chain and so he was trying to arrange the atoms in a straight line in some way that made sense and explained the chemical properties and that wasn’t working and he fell asleep and dreamed of molecules dancing in front of his eyes forming, he said snakes, but they were straight lines of molecules and eventually one of the snakes made of atoms reached around and took its tail in its mouth and he woke up realizing that benzene was a closed ring. But all chemists would have been approaching it to make it some kind of straight line. So dreaming just bypasses that conventional wisdom, ”It has to be done this way, it has to be done this way” and shows more possibilities. So very visual problems or problems where you need to think outside the box are likely to get help from dreams. But then the other aspect is that although these happen spontaneously if people are trying to focus their dreams on a particular topic, we tend to call it dream incubation in psychology, to say tonight I want to dream the answer to a particular problem or I just want to dream on this particular topic you're much likelier to have a dream on that topic or even an answer to the problem than if you weren't doing that as a self-suggestion at bedtime. So everybody tends to get some help and inspiration and good advice from their dreams, but you can you can get more by asking your dreams to focus on particular topics.

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah that's really interesting and I'm gonna to just touch on that well we're there so if you want to remember your dream better and you want to be able to have a dream journal and use it for those that problem-solving like I said because sometimes people say, “Oh I dream but I don't remember it”, what tips do you have for that? So for someone to remember their dream better and then how to do a dream journal.

Deirdre Barrett: OK, well the first tip is the most banal but it's really the most important: Get more sleep than the average American does. If you get eight hours of sleep a night, you'll remember a lot more dreams than if you’re getting less than that. And it's not, we enter rapid eye movement sleep about every 90 minutes through the night but each REM period is getting longer so the first one is just a few minutes whereas the last one can be getting closer to half an hour in length so if you sleep four hours instead of eight, you're not getting half your dream time, you're getting twenty percent or less of your dream time when you truncate your sleep because the dreams are coming every 90 minutes but they're getting much longer through the night. So getting enough sleep is extremely important that's the simplest [unintelligible] with high and low dream recall. But other things are the intent. I mean often people that are taking class on dreams or reading a book on dreams it will become more relevant they'll remember more dreams in fact people listening to today's podcast are likelier to remember a dream tonight just by virtue doing that than otherwise, but you can increase that with again a dream incubation like I was talking about for problem solving but just focused on recall. If you're just telling yourself as you fall asleep, “I want to remember my dreams tonight, I want to remember my dreams tonight”, that increases the likelihood and then as you already alluded to keeping some sort of dream journal. What you do in the morning is just as important. First of all aside from the journal, it's better to wake up naturally than to an alarm clock but you know I know everyone can't do that. Whichever way you wake up, if you lie there for a moment and try to think about nothing other than your dream if you already recall it, if you're not gonna write it down or tell it to a recorder, at least rehearse it in your mind. But if you don't recall a dream when you first wake up just lie there and see what content at all is there in your mind. Like, did you wake up kind of thinking about your brother, did you wake up feeling a little sad because sometimes if you just stay focused on that hint of content, a dream will come rushing back, “Oh yeah I was thinking about my brother because I dreamed that he did this” or “I was sad because this dream that just happened.” So dream memory is very fragile and sometimes it's hovering there as you first wake up so don't do anything else first before focusing on the dream. And secondly recording it is nice to have the record but also tends to fix it in your mind even if you're not referring back to the dream journal that much so some people still prefer to hand write things in beautiful leather-bound journals, have a sort of a nice association for some people, or if your laptop's next to your bed you can reach for it and type, but I know that a lot of people are using their smartphones. There are all sorts of apps. Dreams Cloud is one of them, Dream Scope, that have apps where you generally you can set your alarm on the app, make that your alarm in lieu of the other one and they have all sorts of gentler tones to wake you up or even a voice saying, “What were you dreaming?” as the first thing you're going to hear and then your phone is already set to if you speak in response to the alarm or the voice saying, “What were you dreaming?”, it's automatically going to record without you're having to reach over and activate it or anything. So those are some of the easiest you know and then they all do speech to text, so you have an account of it so a lot of the people I know these days, I still type mine out, but most of my students use an app on their phones.

Kaitlin Luna: It's interesting using technology for our dreams. I noticed that I usually will like have to do the hovering where I kind of like [ask myself] “What did I dream” and then I’ll recall it and then I can sort of get it firmly planted in my memory and then I'll write it down when I get the chance. I've been known to do that on the Metro on the way to work. Sitting furiously writing in my journal, the notebook I have.

Deirdre Barrett: Just rehearsing it in your mind, I mean, especially like in the middle of the night if you don't want to disturb a bed partner by speaking your dream or something, if you just kind of run through it in your mind that tends to fix it into long-term memory because otherwise so many people recall waking up from a dream in the middle of the night and going, “Oh wow that was such a weird dream” and that’s all they remember about it or even “I don’t need to write this one down I’m certainly going to remember this one.” Even without writing it down, if you play it through that kind of gets it from short-term to long-term memory.

Kaitlin Luna: Going back to the content of dreams why do some people have recurring dreams and what do we know about what reoccurring dreams mean.

Deirdre Barrett: Recurring dreams are usually thought to be themes that are more important for that person. Freud talked about day residue and it's one of his concepts that's still taken quite seriously the idea that things that happen in the preceding 18 hours are much likelier to show up in your dream than sort of other random previous days. And so lots of lots of dreams are about very recent events and they may be one-time concerns about things that just happened that day and they're still worth interpreting but they're gonna be about a very specific current sort of issue. Whereas if a dream occurs over and over it may be activated by events of a particular day, it may make a long-term issue more salient but it's certainly going to be about something that's a kind of long-term character logic issue for that person. So in general we think of recurring dreams as somewhat more important if you only have time to analyze a few dreams, your recurring dreams would be ones to target.

Kaitlin Luna: And often people talk about having nightmares or violent dreams and I've spoken to friends and you know, myself included, we've had those kinds of scary dreams. So what do those dreams mean and what do you do if you have violent dreams or nightmares often?

Deirdre Barrett: Well they're two very different kinds. One is the metaphoric, they're scary but otherwise the content seems much like other dreams it's fairly metaphoric witches chasing you down a hall in an old building or something. And children have more of those kind of garden-variety metaphor nightmares than adults, they tend to decrease with age but almost everyone has a few of those. Versus post-traumatic nightmares where you've suffered one or more extremely violent, terrifying waking life events and in post-traumatic nightmares, the event tends to unfold very much like it did awake. Some people it replays exactly like they were in a video of the episode of getting raped or being in this battlefield or house burning down around them over and over and over exactly like it happened. Or more commonly it's pretty close to how it happened but it's either got a bit of bizarre dream distortion but not as much as most dreams or often the post traumatic nightmares go one step further like somebody was holding a gun to someone's head and threatening to pull the trigger in real life and they actually do pull the trigger like the dream goes one step further. Whatever was most feared about to happen actually happens. So garden-variety nightmares there they're just normal to a certain extent and some people who have them don't particularly mind them. I've heard a lot of people either say that it's kinda like horror films that you know there's a kind of adrenaline rush and they kind of enjoy their nightmares and I've heard other people who say they don't enjoy them, but they feel like they learn something like it's always pointing out to them things they're anxious about that they hadn't thought of. So many people who have nightmares of that kind of garden variety type don't particularly want them to go away and I think that interpreting them just like you would other dreams thinking about you know what in my waking life you know feels like that feeling in the pit of my stomach when the witch is chasing me down the hall is you know the way to deal with those. But post-traumatic nightmares just retraumatize people it's like having the horrible event happening again night after night after night so that it never recedes into the past and everyone who has post-traumatic nightmares hates having them nobody likes those and I think that it's also not a mystery, you know, if you were raped and you're dreaming about a rape or your house burned down and you're dreaming about flames every night there's not a “Gee, why are you dreaming that” like there is about the witch so there are techniques that can make people stop having post-traumatic nightmares that involve, you can coach people to just wake up if they start, but it seems to be even more effective to have people come up with an alternate scenario, a kind of mastery dream. If the nightmare starts again how would you like it to come out differently and psychologists kind of happened on to this technique because it happens occasionally, spontaneously people have had a nightmare over and over and over about a real event all of a sudden will have this dream where someone comes and rescues them or they do fight off the attacker or in a very dreamlike magical way the whole trauma is swept away and they wake up feeling so much better. And so we found that some people in PTSD groups would hear somebody say, “Oh I used to have a nightmare until one night I had this other wonderful dream” and just hearing that the next week a couple other patients in the group would say they had. So now we coach people to come up with an alternate scenario of what they would like to see happen and kind of get an individual, I mean for the same sounding trauma, some people would rather have someone rescue them other people would rather like fight off some attacker themselves. A lot of sexual abuse survivors would most like to tell off the abuser about why this was so wrong and other people want very magical you know shrink the attacker of the fire down you know to a quarter inch high dreamlike things so once you come up with an alternate scenario you practice that at bedtime this is again another variation on dream incubation just telling yourself you know if my traumatic nightmare starts I want you this scenario and picture the alternate scenario and that that works for a lot of people. A lot of people have the alternate dream and then never have the nightmare again. And then in the research study some people do that, and the nightmares stop without their at least consciously recalling having the alternate dreams, so we don't really know if they have it and forget it, but it still serves its purpose or if simply the visualization of the scenario you know awake at bedtime has a similar effect for some people.

Kaitlin Luna: OK that's really fascinating that you have some control over this I mean if you tell yourself you want the this dream to stop or to reach a better conclusion that's really fascinating.

Deirdre Barrett: Yes, I mean the areas in our brain associated with memory are not quite as active but they're certainly somewhat awake as we dream so requests to our dreaming mind do very often get through it's not a one-to-one, you know just ask for it once and you’ll dream on this topic, but it's very often effective especially with repetition more than one night.

Kaitlin Luna: And moving on to pets. I know you said animals, mammals, do go into REM sleep but you know if you've watched your pet dog on the ground when they start falling asleep, my dog barks and she, you know, twitches her legs, that sort of thing so it looks like they're dreaming, you know, as far as we can tell but so do animals dream and how would we know if they do or don't?

Deirdre Barrett: Well, that's a very good question. I tend to assume that they do. We know that all mammals except cetaceans, whales and dolphins do not have REM sleep, they have this strange sleep where they sleep with one half of their brain at a time, but all other mammals alternate between non-REM sleep and rapid eye movement sleep and their brain has activity that looks very similar to ours when we are dreaming . So I am willing to make the leap and say that I think that mammals are dreaming and whatever they're, you know, elephant or mousy or doggie or catty version of that is. Some of my colleagues would not would not say that, I mean some of my colleagues would not assume any consciousness to other mammalian species or only past a certain level in the evolutionary hierarchy but yeah, I think they have the same brain state that we dream in I think they're probably dreaming in some way. The only slight evidence for dream reports from animals are Penny Patterson who had the gorillas Koko and Michael. Koko died, I believe. But Koko used to sign kind of fantastic scenarios right upon awakening and no other time, so she'd sign about cars flying through the sky or she'd signed something about seeing a person who she actually hadn't seen in six months and those sort of signing not real fantastic things only seemed to happen upon awakening. So Penny assumed that those were dream reports and you know you could argue about that but I, you know, I think that sounds quite likely and the gorilla Michael, who didn't have quite as big of a signed vocabulary, but I guess he's still learning he's certainly still alive and well, he was known to have had his entire extended family group killed by poachers and then he was picked up as an infant and sold through several iterations and eventually went to Penny's reserve so he had a very traumatic killing of all of his family in front of him. And she said that he used to wake up signing, “Bad people kill gorillas, bad people kill gorillas”, and again only in the morning so she interpreted that not just as a memory but as seeming like he was probably having a post-traumatic dream about the event. And again, that's very soft evidence, too, and subjective but possibly, we have dream accounts from two gorillas but just in general they are having the same brain state as REM sleep, so I think it's likely that they're dreaming. Now they're not necessarily dreaming when they're twitching and moving though because in humans, although there's something called REM Behavior Disorder where you act out your dreams, we and other mammals are supposed to be paralyzed during REM sleep, and with normal, healthy people and animals that is the case. Where sleepwalking in non-REM sleep is much more common for people and so I think that most times that you see much activity during sleep, you know, when dogs are woofing or moving their legs a lot as they… that's probably out of non-REM sleep which just seems to be mild slight activity in motor areas that's not associated with a big dream scenario in humans. Human sleep walkers usually don't recall anything or it's a very simple, “I was trying to get from place A to place B”, rather than a dream account so I think when you see your dog making the most noise and moving the most it's not necessarily dreaming. When you see its eyelids moving rapidly under its eyes even if it's completely still that's when it's likely to be dreaming.

Kaitlin Luna: okay interesting I'll pay more attention to my dog's eyes. And when you and I spoke before, we talked about lucid dreaming which I know that the journal Dreaming has touched on in various ways but and you've said it's also become a topic in popular culture since the movie Inception came out a number of years ago, so can you explain more about what lucid dreaming is?

Deirdre Barrett: Well the definition is simply that it's a dream in which you know it's a dream. At some point you're going, “This isn't real, I'm dreaming.” Many people, once they're lucid, they then have a lot of control over the dream. If they're being chased down a hall by witch they can choose, “No, I don't wanna…I don't want to have a witch dream anymore” and you know, dissolve the dark building into a beautiful palace or being outdoors and some of their friends instead of the witch. So some people can switch a dream all around once they know they're lucid but not everyone. So the definition is simply knowing you're dreaming even if the dream keeps unfolding in a very dreamlike way. And most people really enjoy lucid dreams. There's occasionally people stay distressed by scary content but usually even if you let the witch stay there and you turn around and ask her why she's chasing you and what she represents once you know she's a dream witch you're not scared anymore so most lucid dreams are very positive and people enjoy having them.

Kaitlin Luna: So what does that mean exactly? Does that mean part of your consciousness turned on at that moment?

Deirdre Barrett: Yes, the EEGs of people having lucid dreams…I mean back in the 80s, it was established that they really did seem to be in rapid eye movement sleep and that was big news because it had been sort of questioned maybe they're waking up into some sort of fantasy waking state. But Steve LaBerge proved that people having lucid dreams are really in rapid eye movement sleep and that's a battle all that sleep labs could tell at that time. But more recently now that you can put on many more tiny EEG leads and reconstruct a much better 3-D image of what's going on in the brain, what that shows is that the person is basically in rapid eye movement sleep but it's not a completely typical episode of rapid eye movement sleep . The prefrontal cortex, the area right behind our forehead that has a lot to do with abstract thinking, is very much damped down during REM sleep it's often misstated that it's turned off or something in REM sleep. That's not true, there is activity there at a lower level even in normal REM sleep. But in lucid dreams, there is usually a little more activity in the prefrontal cortex than there is during other REM periods and that's exactly the area we're noticing discrepancies. The fact that the prefrontal is damped down during most dreams is why we don't question, you know, bizarre, you know, most of the time if we're flying we're just thrilled to be flying not questioning how we can…somebody that you know is dead is showing up in your dream, you usually don't question how that can be, sometimes you do. So, that area that notices things are odd or just even reflects on what's the nature of this experience, that's just turned back up not as much as on average as when we're awake but somewhat more than in typical dreams so that seems to be necessary for lucid dreaming.

Kaitlin Luna: That's interesting. And what are you currently doing with your with dreaming research?

Deirdre Barrett: Well the most recent research study that I finished was a comparison of the content of dream accounts to the content of sleep talking episodes. Finding that they were similar in many ways compared to waking speech. They both express much more fear than we typically talk about awake. They're less set in the present than our waking topics. But then there's some differences, like there's much, much more anger in sleep walking than in either dreams or awake, dreams and waking speech have much more in common in terms of pretty low levels of anger for most people. And sleep talking involves much more anger. So that was my most recent research study and I'm not starting another one real soon because I'm trying to finish a book which is kind of a sequel to my book, The Committee of Sleep , which is all about dreams and creative problem-solving. They both have more theoretical things that I want to say about it but also once that book came out while I was writing it I had to chase down people who'd have amazing problem-solving dreams but once it came out I was getting letters from some famous, you know, ones with major accomplishments that had come from a dream that I didn't know about.  

Kaitlin Luna: Great, more content for you. When is that coming out?

Deirdre Barrett: It's not even in press yet it's probably coming out in a year and a half I would guess. But it's more of a focus than research right now.

Kaitlin Luna: So, Dr. Barrett, can you talk about what you dream about?

Deirdre Barrett: Well my dreams are probably more similar to other dream researchers than to the average person. I know one dream researcher who is just out of grad school where the person doing the most interesting research who wanted the most research assistance and was the most charismatic figure was doing dream research and that he personally had never thought about much about dreams until getting to grad school. But most dream researchers are drawn to the field because we remember more dreams than average. Our dreams are more vivid than average. We tend to have more lucid dreams and flying dreams and just almost any unusual category of dreams that you mentioned that will have a certain low base rate in the general population, I and other dream researchers have more of.  So I was just always fascinated by all these nocturnal adventures which I did remember more of in more detail than the average person and I think a lot of psychologists go to grad school and then pick a specialty within psychology but for me it was much more the other way around. I was just focused on dreams as this fascinating thing as a kid and as I got to be a little older I realized if someone was gonna pay you to study dreams then you better go to graduate school in psychology. So I don't have any way of characterizing, you know, I have all the things we've talked about: recurring dreams, lucid dreams, problem-solving dreams, a few nightmares, not particularly high rate of those, and I have dreams that have solved very practical problems, I have many more dreams that I think are more about my interpersonal emotional issues where you know I dream about people are important to me and in the dream I'm doing something different than the way I'd usually react to them and I wake up and realize that that has some implications for things to do in real life. I have some dreams that are just so gorgeous visually that I've started making art from my dreams. I've just been doing that for about three years, but I sold some art and have some art in art shows and it's all dream art I have no interest in making art other than to represent some of these images that I just want to drag back into the waking world for other people to see them.

Kaitlin Luna: I did see that actually when I was just looking into researching this topic, I saw your artwork and it was striking, strikingly beautiful. Very colorful. And can you describe what your favorite piece of art you created?

Deirdre Barrett: Probably a pair. Most dreams I just make one piece of art from them. But I had a dream where I was walking through Harvard Square which is the neighborhood where I live late at night and I was discovering these little animals up on the rooftops and thinking they must have been living there all the years I did, and I had just never looked up and seen them before. And then eventually they were down in the street and I was thinking, “Oh, they only come down late at night.” And in the dream, I thought, “I've never been the middle of Harvard Square in the middle of the night” and that's extremely not true but in the dream,  it was. So I was discovering these wonderful animals that live on the roof and come down into the streets and so I actually went down and photographed several different buildings that were on this route through the square but it was one of the Harvard Lampoon building and another of a spot called Charlie's Kitchen that are just interesting buildings that are kind of lit up interestingly at night anyway and they had most captured the feel of the dream before I started adding all the little magical creatures up on the roof and spilling down into the street. So I guess I was the happiest with the two I made out of that dream came out really just as I'd seen them in the dream.

Kaitlin Luna: And what do you use for materials? Is it a painting? Is it a sculpture?

Deirdre Barrett: No, it's digitally manipulated photography. So for a few of them, like one I dreamed about a mask changing in all these ways, I found that I really loved masks, so I take pictures when I got a mask exhibit, so I already had enough pictures of masks to start morphing into that dream. But for the one I just mentioned, I went down took pictures of the building and so a real photograph of the building was the basic backdrop and I left the sky and the brick in certain areas unchanged so that it kind of looks photographically real but then I played somewhat with the surface of the building but mainly I put in little creatures, some of which I created from scratch and digital programs, and others I actually took photographs, not of real animals but of like little carvings of already not quite realistic animals and manipulated them a little bit more digitally, so it's always collaged photography with then lots and lots of digital manipulation to give it the surreal look that the dream had.

Kaitlin Luna: So dreams are also inspiration for you as well?

Deirdre Barrett: Yes, definitely. I mean they've been inspiration for, you know, things in my research life and work as a clinician and interpersonal relationships for a long time and I'd only been writing about arts and dreams but lately it's, yeah all of my art is completely inspired by my dreams.

Kaitlin Luna: Well that's wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Barrett.

Deirdre Barrett: Nice to talk to you.

Kaitlin Luna : If you've been a longtime listener or viewer, please consider giving us a rating in iTunes or if you have time please write a review. We'd really appreciate it. We'd also like to hear from you directly, so if you have any questions or comments, please email me at [email protected] . That’s  [email protected] . Speaking of Psychology is part of the APA podcast network, which includes other great podcasts like APA Journals Dialogue , about the latest psychological research and Progress Notes about the practice of psychology. You can find our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also visit speakingofpsychology.org to view more episodes and to find resources on the topics we discuss. I'm your host, Kaitlin Luna for the American Psychological Association. 

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Episode 71: The Science of Dreaming

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177 Dream Research Topics & How to Write a Research Paper on Dreams

People have dreams every night. Dreams are different – sweet dreams and nightmares, colored and colorless. However, every psychologist knows that people need to sleep. Why? Well, let us give you the right to answer this question in your research paper on dreams.

A research paper on dreams is a serious research project. That is why you cannot simply write how dreams can be interpreted or describe your dreams in the research paper on dreams. Research papers on dreams require more serious topics and approach.

Below you will find several possible ideas for research papers on dreams.

• 🔎 Dreams Research Topics
• 💤 Dreams Definition
• ✍️ How to Write about Dreams

😴 Easy Research Topics on Dreams

🛌 essay about dreams topics, 😪 topics for a research paper on sleep and dreams, ✏️ importance of sleep essay topics, 👻 nightmare essay topics.

• 📝 My Dreams Essay – Example

✅ Interesting Facts about Dreams

🔎 dreams research topics – 2024.

• The link between our dreams and emotions.
• What is the role of dreaming in creativity development?
• The gender-based patterns in dreaming experience.
• Sigmund Freud and his theory of dreams.
• The key mechanisms that underlie dreaming.
• What knowledge can you gain from your dreams?
• The impact of eating patterns on the quality of dreams.
• How do different cultures perceive and interpret dreams?
• The advantages and disadvantages of dreaming.
• How can people control their dreams?
• The role of dreams in processing emotions.
• How do bizarre and emotionally intense dreams occur?

💤 What Are Dreams?

Psychologists are sure that dreams are the result of what we wish or think about when we are awake. For example, Freud, a famous psychologist, considered that if a man did not have sexual relations for a long time, he would dream about them. If you think about someone, you may also dream about him/her. This is what you may write about in the research paper on dreams if you want to consider this aspect.

Nightmares can also be a very interesting issue to discuss in research papers on dreams. Psychologists relate nightmares to the field of “unconscious”. Very often, people forget about the stressful situations they once had. However, those situations are reflected in their minds and they can appear in dreams. You may also find other points of view on nightmares and discuss them in your research paper on dreams.

✍️ How to Write a Research Paper about Dreams

A research paper about dreams generally includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. First, it is crucial to choose a relevant and exciting topic to write on and decide on the type of research paper (analytical, argumentative, etc.).

Choosing a Topic

Pick a topic that corresponds to your interests and expertise. It will help you stay more motivated throughout the research process. In addition, ensure that your topic is specific, relevant, and follows the assignment instructions.

If you need help choosing a good topic for your paper, try our free research title generator .

Finding Sources

After you have found a perfect topic on dreams, it is time to look for sources for your research. You can look up information in books, similar research papers, or online sources. Communicating with professionals related to dreams , like psychologists or neurologists, is also a good idea since it is an effective method to gain new knowledge or advice.

Writing a Research Paper

The format of your research paper on dreams should consist of the following elements:

• The relation between dreaming and the role of deep-brain structures.
• Dreaming capacity to repeatedly simulate potential threatening events.
• The role of amygdala and hippocampus in the dreaming process.
• The spiritual significance of dreams in different cultures.
• Dream interpretation and its value in self-understanding.
• How does dream recall reflect social relationships?
• The positive impact of dreams on our physical health.
• Dreams and their role in predicting the future.
• The peculiarities of dreams in pregnant women.
• Why does Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome cause the loss of the ability to dream?
• The role of dreaming in developing cognitive capabilities.
• How can dreams reflect the aging process?
• The repetitive character of some dreams and their meaning.
• Why are young people more likely to dream in color?
• The benefits and cautions of lucid dreaming.
• The influence of smartphones on the content of dreams.
• Why do people forget their dreams after waking up?
• The impact of suppressing intrusive thoughts on dream content.
• What is the role of dreams in developing long-term memory?
• The key causes and types of dreams.
• The peculiarities of dreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Everything you need to know about lucid dreams.
• The role of melatonin in determining the dream content.
• What can we learn from our dreams?
• The psychotomimetic nature of dreams.
• The terrors of sleep paralysis.
• Does screen time affect people’s dreams?
• Dreams and the future of sleep technology.
• Are AI technologies capable of generating dreams?
• The hidden cost of insufficient sleep.
• How can nap breaks improve your productivity at work?
• The main facts and myths about sleep and dreams.
• How can our understanding of dreams shape our worldview?
• The link between dreams and telepathy.
• The process of dreaming in animals.
• Why do some people wake up in the middle of the night?
• The impact of mental illnesses on dream content.
• The role of dreams in art as a source of inspiration.
• How do different societies interpret dreams?
• The power of dreaming in everyday life.
• How to become a morning person: the key strategies.
• The impact of sleep time on life length.
• Ways to decode the language of sleep.
• Using cannabis as a method to cope with nightmares.
• The impact of the daily schedule on improving the quality of sleep.
• How to get a good night’s sleep in a new place?
• Methods to combat morning grogginess.
• Taking care of your sleep as one of the pillars of health.
• The use of dreams in filmmaking and book writing.
• The phenomenon of dreaming during sleep.
• The main phases of sleep in a sleep cycle.
• How is alpha activity measured during sleep?
• The use of oneirology in uncovering the dreaming process.
• Dreaming in Christianity and Islam.
• What is the connection between race and sleep disorders?
• The theory of astral projection during sleep.
• The effect of sleep on pain thresholds and sensitivity.
• The consequences of chronic daytime sleepiness.
• Why is dreaming a key part of a sleep cycle?
• The natural patterns of sleeping in children and teenagers.
• REM and non-REM sleep : the difference.
• What is biphasic sleep, and how does it work?
• The influence of dreams on musical creativity.
• The cultural significance of dream symbols.
• How do moon phases affect your sleep?
• The nature and functions of dreaming.
• The use of dream content during expressive arts therapy.
• What are the possible functions of REM sleep and dreaming?
• The value of dreaming and sleep tracking.
• The analysis of mental activity of sleep and disturbing dreams.
• How do sleep disturbances impact skin health?
• The impact of age on our circadian rhythm.
• The phenomenon of conscious control in dreams.
• How do sleep patterns change across different life stages?
• The influence of sleep quality on academic performance.
• The psychological theories of dreaming purpose.
• The disadvantages of oversleeping for adults.
• How does your body use calories while you sleep?
• Factors influencing the memory of dreams.
• What impact does alcohol have on the sleep cycle and dreaming?
• How can dreams contribute to the healing process?
• The role of sleep in underlying psychological issues.
• The benefits of daytime napping for young people.
• Why does sleep deprivation increase the risk of substance abuse?
• The use of daytime naps to increase imagination.
• The value of bedtime routine for toddlers.
• The benefits of a good night’s sleep.
• What is the role of sleeping in achieving life goals?
• Lack of sleep as a key cause of hormonal imbalance.
• The damaging effect of shift work on sleep patterns and health.
• The link between sleep and the immune system.
• What impact does a change of clocks by an hour have on public health?
• The value of sleep for children’s physical, cognitive, and emotional development.
• What would happen if you did not sleep?
• The importance of sleep for children’s development and growth.
• The connection between good mood and quality sleep.
• Why does the lack of sleep increase aggression?
• The role of sleeping in cancer prevention and treatment.
• The value of sleep for the recovery process of athletes.
• How does the quality of sleep impact metabolism?

Essay about Sleep Deprivation

• The economic impact of sleep deprivation in the workplace.
• How can sleep deprivation lead to anxiety and depression?
• The role of sleep deprivation in worsening obesity and diabetes.
• The use of sleeping pills in sleep deprivation treatment.
• How is sleep deprivation diagnosed?
• The prevalence of sleep deprivation among shift workers.
• What is the difference between sleep deprivation and insomnia?
• The key stages of sleep deprivation.
• The role of DNA in the development of sleep deprivation.
• The unique challenges in diagnosing obstructive sleep deprivation.
• How does sleep deprivation affect the human body?
• The issue of sleep deprivation in teenagers due to exams.
• The role of medications in managing sleep deprivation.
• Ways of reducing the risk of developing sleep deprivation.
• What are the key symptoms of sleep deprivation?

Why Is Sleep Important? Essay Topics

• The efficiency of sleeping in losing weight.
• How can sleep improve concentration and productivity?
• Sleep as essential component of healthy aging.
• Why can a lack of sleep be dangerous?
• Sleep satisfaction and its impact on energy level.
• How is poor sleep linked to depression?
• The impact of sleep on emotional intelligence.
• How does sleep help to repair and restore tissues?
• The role of sleeping in removing toxins from the brain.
• Why can the lack of sleep be lethal?
• The link between sleep quality and mental resilience.
• Sleep loss and its impact on reducing the ability to regulate emotions.
• The role of sleep in the regulation of the central nervous system.
• How can the quality of sleep strengthen your heart?
• Sleeping as a method to maximize athletic performance.

Sleeping Disorders Essay Topics

• The connection between sleep disorders and dreaming.
• Do congenitally blind people have visual dreams?
• The effective ways of coping with insomnia.
• Sleep difficulties and their physical and emotional consequences.
• How does weight affect sleep apnea in adults?
• Breathing practices and their efficiency in overcoming sleep disorders.
• The key symptoms of sleep-related hypoventilation .
• What are the risk factors for sleep disorders?
• Minimizing stress as a method to cope with obstructive sleep apnea.
• The side effects of sleep disorder treatment.
• What are the major categories of sleep disorders, and how do they differ?
• Restless legs syndrome as one of the sleep disorder types.
• The effectiveness of light therapy in sleep disorder treatment.
• The peculiarities of sleep disorder diagnosis.
• How to deal with rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder?
• Nightmare disorder and its impact on sleep quality.
• The role of negative thinking, stress, and anxiety in worsening nightmares.
• How may nightmares help to express unresolved emotions?
• The influence of nightmares on interpersonal relationships.
• The use of cognitive behavioral therapy in nightmare treatment.
• Are nightmares a possible consequence of drug abuse?
• The key symptoms of experiencing nightmares.
• The health effects of nightmares in adults.
• How are nightmares connected to waking activity?
• The possible consequences of nightmares.
• The efficiency of psychotherapy in nightmare treatment.
• The main causes of nightmares and methods to cope with them.
• How are nightmares different from sleep terrors?
• The role of sleep hygiene practices in preventing nightmares.
• How do nightmares affect the daily life of teenagers?
• Nightmares as a result of trauma-related experience.
• The link between nightmares and sleep paralysis.
• How does genetics impact the occurrence of nightmares?
• The neurobiological aspects of nightmares in children.
• The risk factors of having nightmare disorder.

📝 My Dreams Essay – Example

We have prepared a dream essay example to show you how everything works in practice!

How Do Different Societies Interpret Dreams?

Throughout history, dreams have been a mysterious experience for people worldwide, receiving various interpretations in many different countries and cultures. From ancient times to the present, people have believed that dreams provide crucial insights into our inner being and may even impact our perception of the universe.

For example, in ancient Egypt, snakes were often associated with danger, deceit, and the underworld. At the same time, seeing calm water in a dream was a good sign that meant peace and tranquility. If people were flying while asleep, it symbolized spiritual growth and escape from mortal concerns.

In ancient Mesopotamia, animals were frequently seen as symbols of the dreamer's personality traits. For instance, a lion might symbolize strength and power, while a sheep could represent humility and submission. Numbers also had a special meaning. People believed their appearance in dreams could be interpreted as messages from the gods.

Nowadays, people still interpret dreams in various ways based on their personal beliefs and traditions. However, it is crucial to understand that there is no correct or incorrect approach to interpreting dreams. The essential thing is to discover a method that resonates with you, allowing you to obtain insights into your subconscious mind. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful.

Do you want to make your research paper on dreams interesting? Then, include a couple of facts into your research paper on dreams:

• Blind people dream;
• You forget 90% of your dreams;
• Dreams prevent psychosis;
• Not everyone sees colorful dreams;
• When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.

Who knows, maybe you will manage to interpret one of these facts from the psychological point of view in your research paper on dreams.

On our blog, useful information on how to write a good research paper and make a cover page for research papers can also be found.

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Key Concepts in Dream Research: Cognition and Consciousness Are Inherently Linked, but Do No Not Control “Control”!

Introduction.

Whilst lucid dreaming (LD) is defined as being aware of dreaming whilst dreaming, a misconception exists in the public domain as a referral to controlling dream content and plot (Neuhäusler et al., 2018 ). This misconception reflects a number of widely-held beliefs about the nature of dreaming, which in part this commentary will seek to explain and rectify.

Furthermore, the aim of this piece is to suggest definitions of key concepts in the study of lucid and non-lucid dreaming concerning control, cognition, and consciousness. Whilst superficially there seems overlap between each of these, independent processes, and associated experiences underpin them.

First it is necessary to identify the parameters of “dreaming.” Essentially dreaming refers to the recollection of mental content from sleep. This broad definition recognizes that dreams may be fragmented, brief, non-narrative, thought-like, and/or containing basic sensory-perceptual experiences such as emotions, without necessarily comprising complex plots or activity. It also emphasizes the role of memory in accessing experiences, as there are no valid means by which dreams can be sampled, as neither can individuals report on their activity during sleep nor can we independently validate individuals' experiences. Some scholars use “REM” (rapid eye-movement) sleep and “dreaming” synonymously (e.g., Walker, 2009 ), recognizing that the majority of spontaneously recalled dream reports emerge from REM sleep, and indeed that REM sleep provides the conditions most typical of dreams, such as bizarreness, clearer dream recall, emotionality and, likely, hyperassociativity (Horton and Malinowski, 2015 ; Malinowski and Horton, 2015 ; Horton, 2017 ), in which several distinct memory sources and images can be simultaneously experienced. However, dreams can be sampled easily from non-REM periods, and REM can exist without dreaming (Solms, 2000 ), thus is it essential to define the parameters of dreaming relevant to each scientific investigation. For instance, if we are interested in cognition and/or consciousness across different periods of sleep, or even across sleep and wake, then the term “mental content” or “mentation” may be more appropriate than “dream,” to aid such comparability (Kahan and LaBerge, 2011 ). If we are interested in characteristics such as emotional intensity or report length, then we need to clarify whether we should focus upon memory recall from sleep or the underlying features of a conscious state such as neurological correlates of such activity.

Next, for explorations LD, or even mere lucidity, researchers need to define and operationalise LD. An awareness of dreaming during dreaming relies on accurate reality monitoring processes (Johnson et al., 1984 ) as well as unbiased recall. Reality monitoring is typically impaired during sleep, hence making experiences of lucidity rare and interesting. However, in order to engage the frontal faculties sufficiently to warrant accurate reality monitoring, an atypical neurological profile is engaged (Voss et al., 2014 ). It is therefore important to note that lucidity is infrequent and abnormal (Vallat et al., 2018 ), and as such likely does not reflect “normal” cognition and consciousness during sleep, particularly when extensive training is necessary in order to create pre-requisite conditions for lucidity to emerge (e.g., Baird et al., 2019 ). Nevertheless, LD can be reliably measured, in laboratory conditions, by asking trained participants to move their eyes systematically whilst lucid (Mota-Rolim, 2020 ), and it is recognized that LD may provide insights into the nature of consciousness (Baird et al., 2019 ), albeit in a more artificial than naturally-occurring environment.

The Elements of Cognition vs. Consciousness

As lucidity during sleep relies on heightened metacognitive activity, we need to understand what is meant by cognition during sleep and during wake. Cognition refers to the capacities and capabilities of function, in this case during sleep, in particular the organization, activation and reactivation of memories or experiences that are either familiar or unfamiliar to the dreamer. These processing capacities are notoriously difficult to study at any time, during sleep or wake, as some are so speedy they are automatic and operate beyond conscious awareness (see also the use of the term “offline processing” insofar as describing non-conscious cognitive activity, e.g., Wamsley, 2014 ). Consequently, it can be apparently tangible for researchers to focus upon the neural correlates of such behavior, to provide evidence for their functional existence (Baird et al., 2019 ). However, cognitive scientists need to offer theory for the function of such processes, for instance in relation to sleep-dependent memory consolidation (Payne and Nadel, 2004 ), rather than merely studying activations without considering functional relevance. In dream science, memory activations and predictable patterns of dreaming of familiar aspects of waking life have largely been explored under the Continuity Hypothesis (Schredl and Hofmann, 2003 ), as well as being observed in relation to other behaviors, such as personality traits (Schredl and Erlacher, 2004 ), moods, or subsequent performance on cognitive tasks such as problem solving, insight, creativity (Cai et al., 2009 ; Lewis et al., 2018 ), composition or recall (Baylor and Cavallero, 2001 ). Studies of cognition and metacognition during sleep have found that dreaming is not deficient but rather different in only a few ways to waking cognition (Kahan and LaBerge, 2011 ), with reality monitoring being one of the key different features. Specifically, during most sleep experiences, people cannot determine that their mental experience is internally- rather than externally-generated, consequently dreams feel real. Only in the cases of LD are individuals aware that they are dreaming. However, often the heightened metacognitive awareness is rousing and awakens the dreamer.

Whilst being aware of an experience as being internally- or externally-oriented can be operationalised in cognitive, or metacognitive terms, the conscious experience of that function may be characterized somewhat differently, although some features may overlap with those of cognition. Consciousness may, here, refer to the more characteristic features of sleep mentation, including experiential elements such as the fluidity, continuity over time, presence of specific features or characters and the more holistic nature of mental content. For instance, we may note that non-REM mentation is typically thought-like and brief, containing day residues and life-like references, whereas REM sampled mentation is typically bizarre, story-like and full of activity (Baylor and Cavallero, 2001 ; Blagrove et al., 2011 ). These descriptions of sleep mentation could well-reflect underlying cognitive processes such as memory activation, likely forming memory consolidation processes, but the overriding consciousness is more descriptive. The cognitive interests relate to function, and may be measures in those terms, such as extent of activation, which may also include aspects that are non-conscious at the point of experience.

When considering lucidity, the nature of the consciousness may include sensations of awe at realizing one is dreaming, as well as vivid memories of the dream experience itself. This is commonly associated with increased underlying neurocognitive activity. The underlying cognition , or hypothetical function, reflects accurate reality monitoring, metacognition, self-awareness and, typically, arousal (from enjoyment of the experience).

Furthermore, in some studies of LD, participants who achieve lucidity may continue to develop the ability to control their actions during dreaming (LaBerge, 1980 ). Indeed, several studies aimed to achieve this, rather than studying the mere presence of lucidity in more naturalistic or opportunistic settings. Such studies confuse the concepts of lucidity and control, with the former being more likely to occur naturally, and the latter being rare and artificial experiences. As such scholars should be cautious about inferring the nature of consciousness and/or cognition from artificial control-induction techniques, as this likely differs from the profile of mental content emerging from experiences of lucidity.

LD is unusual, relative to the existence of dreaming which, arguably, occurs the entire time that one is asleep (if the present definition of dreaming is adopted, as consciousness continues, even during sleep). Whilst lucid, or controlled, experiences may offer a therapeutic benefit, for instance by allowing individuals to rehearse actions (Stumbrys et al., 2016 ) or overcome threats (Putois et al., 2019 ) during sleep, they are typically fleeting, and estimations of their frequency often rely on self-report and retrospective methods (Vallat et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, inducing lucidity interrupts sleep, which we know is required to facilitate emotion-regulation and memory consolidation processes, which arguably would be more beneficial than any benefits of lucid dreaming anyway (Vallat and Ruby, 2019 ).

To operationalise lucidity, researchers should take care not to confuse controlling the dream experience with mere awareness of dreaming. We should then define control carefully for instance as voluntarily changing experience. Superficially control may seem to rely upon both a specific cognitive and consciousness profile, however the conscious awareness of control may only become apparent at the time of recall, rather than during the experience itself, and again scholars should take care to identify any potential additional explanatory information offered to a dream report at the point of reporting it, as being distinct from a description of the original experience.

Caution should be urged when considering whether it may be appropriate to recommend that participants control their dreams, given that doing so increases sleep disturbances via awakenings (however, see LaBerge et al., 2018a , who included data from uninterrupted REM sleep only, but see also LaBerge et al., 2018b , for a paradigm in which participants remained awake for 30 min in the middle of the night, which increased LD recall), and also that controlling dream content is unnatural, therefore it may restrict the activation of memory sources and emotions that may underly sleep-dependent memory consolidation (Wamsley and Stickgold, 2011 ) and emotion regulation (Walker, 2009 ) processes. Perhaps only in the case of nightmares causing substantive distress, most typically in sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, should the possible benefits of reducing distress from terrifying dreams outweigh the likely negative consequences of changing sleep structure and physiology, by restricting the opportunity for “offline” processing (e.g., Putois et al., 2019 ).

In the occasions of spontaneous ongoing lucidity, whereby the experience does not awaken the dreamer, either the dreamer attempts to understand, or even “interpret” meaning from the typically bizarre dream narrative in which they find themselves, or they attempt to control it in some form during the dream state. The latter, in the case of LD, can be learned in some cases (LaBerge, 1980 ). Comparable practices during wakefulness demonstrate the ability for some to being able to gain fuller awareness of some typically more automatic behaviors, as depicted by the rise in popularity of mindfulness.

LD is concerning for a number of reasons, as recently outlined by Vallat and Ruby ( 2019 ), whereby training to overcome the mental content spontaneously emerging during sleep-dependent cognition ultimately changes and thwarts those processes. Humans likely need to foster the conditions for those processes to occur in order to benefit from the plethora of advantages of sleep.

It seems surprising that LD has received much attention, when time spent dreaming is far greater. Furthermore, the nature of dreaming and consciousness is fascinating, and may provide insights into the nature and perhaps function of underlying cognitive processes. For instance, dream bizarreness, which typifies REM mentation (Revonsuo and Tarkko, 2002 ; Payne, 2010 ) and likely results, at least in part, from hyperassociativity of distinct memory sources during sleep (Horton and Malinowski, 2015 ) may inform an understanding of the activation, fragmentation and re-organization of memory sources as part of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes (Horton, 2017 ). Lucidity, however, is highly atypical and therefore arguably cannot offer so much insight.

“Control” within LD inherently unnatural and disrupts sleep. Controlled dreams rarely exist spontaneously, either in typical or atypical cognition. Scholars therefore should have the integrity to consider the impact that studies of control may have not only on participants engaging with such studies, but also the wider community who may be attracted to the idea of controlling their dreams. There is a duty to convey that we should not control, control, but instead promote the benefits of sleeping well (Walker, 2019 ), to afford the opportunity to dream.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider whether LD may have adaptiveness value, especially in the case of emotion processing and/or when the incidence of LD correlates with pathologies. LD may also provide insights into the nature of dreaming, principally by involving the dreamer during the dream (Zink and Pietrowsky, 2015 ), rather than just afterwards during recall.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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18 Interesting Psychology Research Paper Topics On Dreams

People have been interested in the topic of dreams since the early years of human civilization. Modern psychology allows us to learn more about dreams but there are still a lot of questions that we don’t have answers to. If you have to write a research paper about dreams, there are plenty of interesting topics to choose from.

The List of Research Paper Topics about Dreams

• A detailed definition of a dream.
• The reasons for us to dream.
• People who don’t have dreams.
• The duration of a dream.
• The meaning of dreams.
• The formula of most dreams.
• The features of lucid dreams.
• The nature of nightmares.
• Ways to deal with anxiety dreams.
• The meaning of repetitive dreams.
• Patients with REM behavior disorder.
• Dreams with empty emotional content.
• Dreams that portend psychosis.
• Measures to take for remembering more of your dreams.
• Dreams of animals.
• Remembering dreams under hypnosis.
• Sigmund Freud’s theory about dreams.
• Psychotherapy and dreams.

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Make a good outline in order to follow it during the writing process. This will help you remember to include every important detail in your text. You may start writing with body chapters rather than with an introduction, however. Usually, if you start with an introduction, you might have to make changes in it later. The contents of the body chapters might differ a little bit from your initial ideas.

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Why Do We Dream?

There's no single consensus about which dream theory best explains why we dream

Verywell / Madelyn Goodnight

What Is a Dream Theory?

• The Role of Dreams
• Reflect the Unconscious
• Process Information
• Aid In Memory
• Spur Creativity
• Reflect Your Life
• Prepare and Protect
• Process Emotions
• Other Theories

Lucid Dreaming

Stress dreams.

A dream theory is a proposed explanation for why people dream that is backed by scientific evidence. Despite scientific inquiry, we still don't have a solid answer for why people dream. Some of the most notable theories are that dreaming helps us process memories and better understand our emotions , also providing a way to express what we want or to practice facing our challenges.

At a Glance

There is no single dream theory that fully explains all of the aspects of why we dream. The most prominent theory is that dreams help us to process and consolidate information from the previous day. However, other theories have suggested that dreams are critical for emotional processing, creativity, and self-knowledge.

Some theories suggest that dreams also have symbolic meanings that offer a glimpse into the unconscious mind. Keep reading to learn more about some of the best-known theories about why we dream.

7 Theories on Why We Dream

A dream theory focuses on understanding the nature and purpose of dreams. Studying dreams can be challenging since they can vary greatly in how they are remembered and what they are about.

Dreams include the images, thoughts, and emotions that are experienced during sleep. They can range from extraordinarily intense or emotional to very vague, fleeting, confusing, or even boring.

Some dreams are joyful, while others are frightening or sad. Sometimes dreams seem to have a clear narrative, while many others appear to make no sense at all.

There are many unknowns about dreaming and sleep, but what scientists do know is that just about everyone dreams every time they sleep, for a total of around two hours per night, whether they remember it upon waking or not .

Beyond what's in a particular dream, there is the question of why we dream at all. Below, we detail the most prominent theories on the purpose of dreaming and how these explanations can be applied to specific dreams.

How Do Scientists Study Dreams?

The question of why we dream has fascinated philosophers and scientists for thousands of years. Traditionally, dream content is measured by the subjective recollections of the dreamer upon waking. However, observation is also accomplished through objective evaluation in a lab.

In one study, researchers even created a rudimentary dream content map that was able to track what people dreamed about in real time using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) patterns. The map was then backed up by the dreamers' reports upon waking.

What Dream Theory Suggests About the Role of Dreams

Some of the more prominent dream theories suggest that the reason we dream is to:

• Consolidate memories
• Process emotions
• Express our deepest desires
• Gain practice confronting potential dangers

Many experts believe that we dream due to a combination of these reasons rather than any one particular theory. Additionally, while many researchers believe that dreaming is essential to mental, emotional, and physical well-being, some scientists suggest that dreams serve no real purpose at all.

The bottom line is that while many theories have been proposed, no single consensus has emerged about which dream theory best explains why we dream.

Dreaming during different phases of sleep may also serve unique purposes. The most vivid dreams happen during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep , and these are the dreams that we're most likely to recall. We also dream during non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep, but those dreams are known to be remembered less often and have more mundane content.

Sigmund Freud's Dream Theory

Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams suggests that dreams represent  unconscious desires, thoughts, wish fulfillment, and motivations. According to Freud, people are driven by repressed and unconscious longings, such as aggressive and sexual instincts .

While many of Freud's assertions have been debunked, research suggests there is a dream rebound effect, also known as dream rebound theory, in which suppression of a thought tends to result in dreaming about it.

What Causes Dreams to Happen?

In " The Interpretation of Dreams ," Freud wrote that dreams are "disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes." He also described two different components of dreams: manifest content (actual images) and latent content (hidden meaning).

Freud’s theory contributed to the rise and popularity of dream interpretation . While research has failed to demonstrate that the manifest content disguises the psychological significance of a dream, some experts believe that dreams play an important role in processing emotions and stressful experiences.

Activation-Synthesis Dream Theory

According to the activation-synthesis model of dreaming , which was first proposed by J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, circuits in the brain become activated during REM sleep, which triggers the amygdala and hippocampus to create an array of electrical impulses. This results in a compilation of random thoughts, images, and memories that appear while dreaming.

When we wake, our active minds pull together the dream's various images and memory fragments to create a cohesive narrative.  

In the activation-synthesis hypothesis, dreams are a compilation of randomness that appear to the sleeping mind and are brought together in a meaningful way when we wake. In this sense, dreams may provoke the dreamer to make new connections, inspire useful ideas, or have creative epiphanies in their waking lives.

Self-Organization Dream Theory

According to the information-processing theory, sleep allows us to consolidate and process all of the information and memories that we have collected during the previous day. Some dream experts suggest that dreaming is a byproduct, or even an active part, of this experience processing.  

This model, known as the self-organization theory of dreaming , explains that dreaming is a side effect of brain neural activity as memories are consolidated during sleep.

During this process of unconscious information redistribution, it is suggested that memories are either strengthened or weakened. According to the self-organization theory of dreaming, while we dream, helpful memories are made stronger, while less useful ones fade away.

Research supports this theory, finding improvement in complex tasks when a person dreams about doing them. Studies also show that during REM sleep, low-frequency theta waves were more active in the frontal lobe, just like they are when people are learning, storing, and remembering information when awake.

Creativity and Problem-Solving Dream Theory

Another theory about dreams says that their purpose is to help us solve problems. In this creativity theory of dreaming, the unconstrained, unconscious mind is free to wander its limitless potential while unburdened by the often stifling realities of the conscious world. In fact, research has shown dreaming to be an effective promoter of creative thinking.

Scientific research and anecdotal evidence back up the fact that many people do successfully mine their dreams for inspiration and credit their dreams for their big "aha" moments.

The ability to make unexpected connections between memories and ideas that appear in your dreams often proves to be an especially fertile ground for creativity.

Continuity Hypothesis Dream Theory

Under the continuity hypothesis, dreams function as a reflection of a person's real life, incorporating conscious experiences into their dreams. Rather than a straightforward replay of waking life, dreams show up as a patchwork of memory fragments.

Still, studies show that non-REM sleep may be more involved with declarative memory (the more routine stuff), while REM dreams include more emotional and instructive memories.

In general, REM dreams tend to be easier to recall compared to non-REM dreams.

Under the continuity hypothesis, memories may be fragmented purposefully in our dreams as part of incorporating new learning and experiences into long-term memory . Still, there are many unanswered questions as to why some aspects of memories are featured more or less prominently in our dreams.

Rehearsal and Adaptation Dream Theory

The primitive instinct rehearsal and adaptive strategy theories of dreaming propose that we dream to better prepare ourselves to confront dangers in the real world. The dream as a social simulation function or threat simulation provides the dreamer a safe environment to practice important survival skills.

While dreaming, we hone our fight-or-flight instincts and build mental capability for handling threatening scenarios. Under the threat simulation theory, our sleeping brains focus on the fight-or-flight mechanism to prep us for life-threatening and/or emotionally intense scenarios including:

• Running away from a pursuer
• Falling over a cliff
• Showing up somewhere naked
• Going to the bathroom in public
• Forgetting to study for a final exam

This theory suggests that practicing or rehearsing these skills in our dreams gives us an evolutionary advantage in that we can better cope with or avoid threatening scenarios in the real world. This helps explain why so many dreams contain scary, dramatic, or intense content.

Emotional Regulation Dream Theory

The emotional regulation dream theory says that the function of dreams is to help us process and cope with our emotions or trauma in the safe space of slumber.

Research shows that the amygdala , which is involved in processing emotions, and the hippocampus , which plays a vital role in condensing information and moving it from short-term to long-term memory storage, are active during vivid, intense dreaming.

This illustrates a strong link between dreaming, memory storage, and emotional processing.

This theory suggests that REM sleep plays a vital role in emotional brain regulation. It also helps explain why so many dreams are emotionally vivid and why emotional or traumatic experiences tend to show up on repeat. Research has shown a connection between the ability to process emotions and the amount of REM sleep a person gets.

Sharing Dreams Promotes Connection

Talking about content similarities and common dreams with others may help promote belongingness and connection. Research notes heightened empathy among people who share their dreams with others, pointing to another way dreams can help us cope by promoting community and interpersonal support.

Other Theories About Why We Dream

Many other theories have been suggested to account for why we dream.

• One dream theory contends that dreams are the result of our brains trying to interpret external stimuli (such as a dog's bark, music, or a baby's cry) during sleep.
• Another theory uses a computer metaphor to account for dreams, noting that dreams serve to "clean up" clutter from the mind, refreshing the brain for the next day.
• The reverse-learning theory suggests that we dream to forget. Our brains have thousands of neural connections between memories—too many to remember them all—and that dreaming is part of "pruning" those connections.
• In the continual-activation theory, we dream to keep the brain active while we sleep, in order to keep it functioning properly.

Overfitted Dream Hypothesis

One recently introduced dream theory, known as the overfitted dream hypothesis, suggests that dreams are the brain's way of introducing random, disruptive data to help break up repetitive daily tasks and information. Researcher Erik Hoel suggests that such disruptions helps to keep the brain fit.

Lucid dreams are relatively rare dreams where the dreamer has awareness of being in their dream and often has some control over the dream content. Research indicates that around 50% of people recall having had at least one lucid dream in their lifetime and just over 10% report having them two or more times per month.

It is unknown why certain people experience lucid dreams more frequently than others. While experts are unclear as to why or how lucid dreaming occurs, preliminary research signals that the prefrontal and parietal regions of the brain play a significant role.

How to Lucid Dream

Many people covet lucid dreaming and seek to experience it more often. Lucid dreaming has been compared to virtual reality and hyper-realistic video games, giving lucid dreamers the ultimate self-directed dreamscape experience.

Potential training methods for inducing lucid dreaming include cognitive training, external stimulation during sleep, and medications. While these methods may show some promise, none have been rigorously tested or shown to be effective.

A strong link has been found between lucid dreaming and highly imaginative thinking and creative output. Research has shown that lucid dreamers perform better on creative tasks than those who do not experience lucid dreaming.

Stressful experiences tend to show up with great frequency in our dreams. Stress dreams may be described as sad, scary, and nightmarish .

Experts do not fully understand how or why specific stressful content ends up in our dreams, but many point to a variety of theories, including the continuity hypothesis, adaptive strategy, and emotional regulation dream theories to explain these occurrences. Stress dreams and mental health seem to go hand-in-hand.

• Daily stress shows up in dreams : Research has shown that those who experience greater levels of worry in their waking lives and people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) report higher frequency and intensity of nightmares.
• Mental health disorders may contribute to stress dreams : Those with mental health disorders such as anxiety, bipolar disorder , and depression tend to have more distressing dreams, as well as more difficulty sleeping in general.
• Anxiety is linked to stress dreams : Research indicates a strong connection between anxiety and stressful dream content. These dreams may be the brain's attempt to help us cope with and make sense of these stressful experiences.

While many theories exist about why we dream, more research is needed to fully understand their purpose. Rather than assuming only one dream theory is correct, dreams likely serve various purposes. In reality, many of these dream theories may be useful for explaining different aspects of the dreaming process.

If you are concerned about your dreams and/or are having frequent nightmares , consider speaking to your doctor or consulting a sleep specialist.

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Luongo A, Lukowski A, Protho T, Van Vorce H, Pisani L, Edgin J. Sleep's role in memory consolidation: What can we learn from atypical development ?  Adv Child Dev Behav . 2021;60:229-260. doi:10.1016/bs.acdb.2020.08.001

Scarpelli S, D'Atri A, Gorgoni M, Ferrara M, De Gennaro L. EEG oscillations during sleep and dream recall: state- or trait-like individual differences ?  Front Psychol . 2015;6:605. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00605

Llewellyn S, Desseilles M. Editorial: Do both psychopathology and creativity result from a labile wake-sleep-dream cycle? . Front Psychol . 2017;8:1824. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01824

Revonsuo A. The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming .  Behav Brain Sci . 2000;23(6):877-901. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00004015

Ruby PM. Experimental research on dreaming: State of the art and neuropsychoanalytic perspectives . Front Psychol . 2011;2:286. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00286

Gujar N, McDonald SA, Nishida M, Walker MP. A role for REM sleep in recalibrating the sensitivity of the human brain to specific emotions . Cereb Cortex . 2011;21(1):115-23. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhq064

Blagrove M, Hale S, Lockheart J, Carr M, Jones A, Valli K. Testing the empathy theory of dreaming: The relationships between dream sharing and trait and state empathy . Front Psychol . 2019;10:1351. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01351

Poe GR. Sleep is for forgetting .  J Neurosci . 2017;37(3):464-473. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0820-16.2017

Zhang J. Continual-activation theory of dreaming .  Dynamical Psychology .

Hoel E. The Overfitted Brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization . Published online 2020.doi:10.48550/arXiv.2007.09560

Vallat R, Ruby PM. Is it a good idea to cultivate lucid dreaming? Front Psychol . 2019;10:2585. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02585

Baird B, Mota-Rolim SA, Dresler M. The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming . Neurosci Biobehav Rev . 2019;100:305-323. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.03.008

Stumbrys T, Daunytė V. Visiting the land of dream muses: The relationship between lucid dreaming and creativity . 2018;11(2). doi:10.11588/ijodr.2018.2.48667

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Sikka P, Pesonen H, Revonsuo A. Peace of mind and anxiety in the waking state are related to the affective content of dreams . Sci Rep . 2018;8(1):12762. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-30721-1

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

The Psychology of Dreams: Inside the Dream Mind

Why do we dream? How do dreams provide insight into the mind? Are dreams relevant to waking life? From ancient times when dreams were considered to hold prophetic powers to the neurological phenomena studied today, dreams remain one of psychology’s most enduring mysteries. Although scientists continue to research the answers to these questions, they build their work on some commonly accepted dream theories.

The Nature of Dreams

Defined as a series of thoughts, visions or feelings, dreams arise several times per night during sleep.

As a process, sleep is cyclical. It occurs in five stages, each helping to further the body’s goal of bolstering and regenerating itself. While stages 1-4 are simply named as such, the fifth stage is called Rapid Eye Movement, or REM. It makes up about 20 to 25 percent of adult sleep.

The REM stage is the most common time of dreaming , explains the National Sleep Foundation. Dreams themselves usually last between a few seconds to 30 minutes in length. On average, people dream about four to six times per night, with adults dreaming about two hours for every eight hours of sleep.

In addition to its association with dreams, the REM stage is a time when the body processes information, creates memories and increases depleted chemicals, such as serotonin. Although the necessity of sleep has long been observed, only in recent history did people consider that dreams may also serve a utilitarian function.

Four Theories of Dreams

The past two centuries have given rise to four of the most commonly accepted dream theories.

Sigmund Freud and Wish-Fulfillment

The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was the first to suggest that dreams may serve a particular scientific purpose. He came to believe that dreams were often a form of wish-fulfillment , the American Psychoanalytic Association says. In a dream, a subject could act out desires he or she could not fulfill in waking life. Some types of dreams, however, proved problematic within this model, such as dreams involving punishment or traumatic events. These led Freud to believe that dreams sometimes served as a way for patients to express guilt or conquer trauma. All these conjectures played into Freud’s overall (and revolutionary) theory of dreams: that they were manifestations of unconscious workings of the brain.  

Carl Jung: Dreams as Direct Mental Expressions

Although Freud and Carl Jung were contemporaries, they disagreed strongly (and famously) about the nature of dreams. Freud believed that dreams, by nature, disguised their meaning. In contrast, Jung believed that dreams were actually direct expressions of the mind itself . Dreams, he thought, expressed an individual’s unconscious state through a language of symbols and metaphors. This “language” was natural to the unconscious state, but difficult to understand because it varied so much from waking language. Notably, Jung also believed that universal archetypes (or images) intrinsic to all human consciousness existed within this language. He believed that dreams served two functions: to compensate for imbalances in the dreamers’ psyche, and to provide prospective images of the future, which allowed the dreamer to anticipate future events.

REM and Activation-Synthesis

Yet another theory arose with the discovery of REM. The Activation-Synthesis theory was conceived by Harvard professors Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley in the 1970s, explains Joe Griffin of the Human Givens Institute. Hobson and McCarley discovered that during REM sleep, electrical signals called electroencephalogram recordings, or EEGs, pass through the brain. They theorized that the brain naturally reacted by attempting to make sense of the random stimulus. Thus, dreams had no intrinsic meaning; they were just a side effect of the brain’s normal activity. While this theory was revolutionary at the time, the continual advancement of technology has led to tremendous revision of this theory.

Threat Simulation Theory

Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo is one of the latest researchers to suggest a convincing theory about the function of dreams. Revonsuo found that during REM sleep , the amygdala (the fight-or-flight section of the brain) actually fires in similar ways as it does during a survival threat. “The primary function of negative dreams,” he explains , “is rehearsal for similar real events, so that threat recognition and avoidance happens faster and more automatically in comparable real situations.” In other words, dreams are an evolutionary trait designed to help us practice being safe.

Advance Your Understanding of Psychology

Those who enter the field of psychology face the challenge of discovering new answers to old questions regarding human thinking. Brescia University’s online Bachelor of Arts in Psychology provides students with the training required for multiple career paths or graduate study. Brescia’s psychology program was ranked among the top 10 Online Bachelor of Psychology programs by Affordable College Online.

Nightmares, REM

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Why humans dream remains one of behavioral science's great unanswered questions. Dreams have a purpose but it may not be to send us messages about self-improvement or the future, as many believe. Instead, many researchers now believe that dreaming mediates memory consolidation and mood regulation , a process a little like overnight therapy . But it's not a benefit all share equally: People who are sleep deprived also tend to be dream deprived, spending less time dreaming and perhaps not remembering dreams as well.

• What Dreams Mean
• Lucid Dreams

Dreams are the stories the brain tells during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. People typically have multiple dreams each night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. Over a lifetime, a person may dream for five or six full years. How best to examine all that content remains a source of debate.

Dreams typically involve elements from waking life , such as known people or familiar locations, but they also often have a fantastical feel. In dreams, people may live out scenarios that would never be possible in real life, although they aren’t always positive.

People have always tried to figure out the meaning of their dreams, but dream interpretation as a field of psychological study emerged in 1899, when Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams . Today, most experts disagree with Freud’s conclusions, and some don’t believe dreams signify anything at all . But people continue to mine them for clues to their inner lives, creative insight, and even hints of the future.

Nightmares can create feelings of terror, anxiety , or despair, and lead to psychological distress or sleep problems like insomnia . Research has identified a range of causes for nightmares, including post- traumatic stress , anxiety—especially the presence of generalized anxiety disorder, dissociation, and physiological changes.

“Re-experiencing” is a common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as flashbacks. These involuntary recollections  often manifest in the form of nightmares that can cause significant emotional distress. Even when the dreams are not exact replays of a trauma, they may have a strong symbolic or indirect connection to the event.

Terrifying dreams that rouse people from sleep plague children more often than adults , and nightmares can be especially vivid for young children because they may have a harder time separating fantasy from reality. But at least half of grownups also have occasional nightmares, although fewer than 10 percent report frequent or recurring episodes.

Experts recommend that individuals experiencing nightmares tied to stress try to focus on positive elements of their day immediately before bed; catch themselves when they feel themselves ruminating or catastrophizing ; and train themselves not to dwell on disturbing images from nightmares. For nightmares tied to PTSD , visualization treatments in which patients replay traumatic memories in “safe” ways have shown potential to bring relief.

Not necessarily. Night terrors, which are primarily experienced by children, cause sleeping people to scream, bolt out of bed, or demonstrate symptoms similar to a panic attack. But night terrors tend to occur earlier in the sleep cycle , while nightmares take place primarily during REM sleep. And unlike nightmares, night terrors are usually not remembered by sufferers , even though they may appear to be awake during the experience.

During lucid dreaming, which most commonly occurs during late-stage REM sleep, a dreamer is aware that they’re asleep, but is able to control events within their dreams, to some extent. Lucid dreamers report willing themselves to fly, fight, or act out sexual fantasies . There are communities dedicated to learning how to lucid dream at will, although evidence that this is possible remains inconclusive.

Research suggests that the brain undergoes a physiological change during lucid dreaming. In fMRI studies, the prefrontal cortex and a cortical network including the frontal, parietal, and temporal zones have been shown to activate when the brain begins lucid dreaming. This appears related to the "waking consciousness” that characterizes lucidity.

Most people do not typically experience lucid dreaming, or do not realize they do, and those who do tend to experience it in a limited way, without full agency. But some experts, and advocates of the potential benefits of lucid dreaming for boosting creativity and confidence , and reducing stress, believe most people can train themselves to experience lucid dreams.

Advocates of lucid-dream training suggest starting with dedicated recording of one’s dreams to gain a greater awareness of the conscious roles they may already play in common scenarios . Another approach is waking up two hours earlier than normal, staying awake for a short time, and then going back to bed, with the goal of increasing awareness of fresh late-stage REM sleep dreams and eventually directing them.

Over the years therapists have largely overlooked dreamwork as a form of therapy. The research suggests we should bring it back.

Personal perspective: How analyzing a dream illustrates why the appearance of numbers in a dream can connect you to memories of both people and your past.

When the demons of self-doubt throw up blocks to the creative process, picture an alternate universe in which your art-making idol champions you.

Are the dreams we have of lost loved ones meaningful?

A conscious experience of our dreaming self as We may be possible in some cultures and non-lucid dreams.

Blindly following synchronicity isn’t smart, but there are principles to help you effectively mine the wisdom of your coincidences.

A personality type swamped by emotional and psychological distress.

Recurring dreams are always an attention-grabber in conversations. Discover the many benefits our recurring dreams provide us, on both surface and deeper contexts.

Children often look forward to growing up with excitement only to become adults with broken dreams. Why? What exactly does childhood promise that adulthood fails to deliver?

Do you have a recurring nightmare? Traumatic images that replay during sleep can terrorize and disrupt, but there are effective treatments.

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Dreams: Why They Happen & What They Mean

Staff Writer

Eric Suni has over a decade of experience as a science writer and was previously an information specialist for the National Cancer Institute.

Want to read more about all our experts in the field?

Alex Dimitriu

Psychiatrist

Dr. Dimitriu is the founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine. He is board-certified in psychiatry as well as sleep medicine.

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Table of Contents

What Are Dreams?

Why do we dream, when do we dream, do dreams have meaning, what are types of dreams, what are nightmares, do dreams affect sleep, how can you remember dreams, how can you stop nightmares.

• Dreams are mental, emotional, or sensory experiences that take place during sleep.
• Dreams are the most common and intense during REM sleep when brain activity increases, but no one knows for sure why we dream.
• Dreaming is normal and healthy, but frequent nightmares can interfere with sleep.
• Waking up gradually and journaling your dreams may help you remember them better.

Dreams are one of the most fascinating and mystifying aspects of sleep. Since Sigmund Freud helped draw attention to the potential importance of dreams in the late 19th century, considerable research has worked to unravel both the neuroscience and psychology of dreams.

Despite this advancing scientific knowledge, there is much that remains unknown about both sleep and dreams. Even the most fundamental question — why do we dream at all? — is still subject to significant debate.

While everyone dreams, the content of those dreams and their effect on sleep can vary dramatically from person to person. Even though there’s no simple explanation for the meaning and purpose of dreams, it’s helpful to understand the basics of dreams, the potential impact of nightmares, and steps that you can take to sleep better with sweet dreams.

Dreams are images, thoughts, or feelings that occur during sleep. Visual imagery is the most common Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source , but dreams can involve all of the senses. Some people dream in color while others dream in black and white , and people who are blind tend to have more dream components related to sound, taste, and smell Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source .

Studies have revealed diverse types of dream content, but some typical characteristics of dreaming include:

• It has a first-person perspective.
• It is involuntary.
• The content may be illogical or even incoherent.
• The content includes other people who interact with the dreamer and one another.
• It provokes strong emotions.
• Elements of waking life are incorporated into content.

Although these features are not universal, they are found at least to some extent in most normal dreams.

Debate continues among sleep experts Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source about why we dream. Different theories Trusted Source Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School A production of WGBH Educational Foundation and the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine. View Source about the purpose of dreaming Trusted Source National Center for Biotechnology Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source include:

• Building memory: Dreaming has been associated with consolidation of memory, which suggests that dreaming may serve an important cognitive function of strengthening memory and informational recall.
• Processing emotion: The ability to engage with and rehearse feelings in different imagined contexts may be part of the brain’s method for managing emotions.
• Mental housekeeping: Periods of dreaming could be the brain’s way of “straightening up,” clearing away partial, erroneous, or unnecessary information.
• Instant replay: Dream content may be a form of distorted instant replay in which recent events are reviewed and analyzed.
• Incidental brain activity: This view holds that dreaming is just a by-product of sleep that has no essential purpose or meaning.

Experts in the fields of neuroscience and psychology continue to conduct experiments to discover what is happening in the brain during sleep, but even with ongoing research, it may be impossible to conclusively prove any theory for why we dream.

On average, most people dream for around two hours per night. Dreaming can happen Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source during any stage of sleep , but dreams are the most prolific and intense during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage.

During the REM sleep stage, brain activity ramps up considerably compared to the non-REM stages, which helps explain the distinct types of dreaming Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source during these stages. Dreams during REM sleep are typically more vivid, fantastical, and/or bizarre even though they may involve elements of waking life. By contrast, non-REM dreams tend to involve more coherent content that involves thoughts or memories grounded to a specific time and place.

REM sleep is not distributed evenly through the night. The majority of REM sleep happens during the second half of a normal sleep period, which means that dreaming tends to be concentrated in the hours before waking up.

How to interpret dreams, and whether they have meaning at all, are matters of considerable controversy. While some psychologists have argued that dreams provide insight into a person’s psyche or everyday life, others find their content to be too inconsistent or bewildering to reliably deliver meaning.

Virtually all experts acknowledge that dreams can involve content that ties back to waking experiences although the content may be changed or misrepresented. For example, in describing dreams, people often reference people who they recognize clearly even if their appearance is distorted in the dream Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source .

The meaning of real-life details appearing in dreams, though, is far from settled. The “continuity hypothesis” in dream research holds that dreams and waking life are intertwined with one another and thus involve overlapping themes and content. The “discontinuity hypothesis,” on the other hand, sees thinking during dreams and wakefulness as structurally distinct.

While analysis of dreams may be a component of personal or psychological self-reflection, it’s hard to state, based on the existing evidence, that there is a definitive method for interpreting and understanding the meaning of dreams in waking, everyday life.

Dreams can take on many different forms. Lucid dreams occur when a person is in a dream while being actively aware that they are dreaming. Vivid dreams involve especially realistic or clear dream content. Bad dreams are composed of bothersome or distressing content. Recurring dreams involve the same imagery repeating in multiple dreams over time.

Even within normal dreams, there are certain types of content that are especially identifiable. Among the most recognizable and common themes Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source in dreams are things like flying, falling, being chased, or being unable to find a bathroom.

In sleep medicine, a nightmare is a bad dream that causes a person to wake up from sleep Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source . This definition is distinct from common usage that may refer to any threatening, scary, or bothersome dream as a nightmare. While bad dreams are normal and usually benign, frequent nightmares may interfere with a person’s sleep and cause impaired thinking and mood Trusted Source American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM)|National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information View Source during the daytime.

In most cases, dreams don’t affect sleep. Dreaming is part of healthy sleep and is generally considered to be completely normal and without any negative effects on sleep.

Nightmares are the exception. Because nightmares involve awakenings, they can become problematic if they occur frequently. Distressing dreams may cause a person to avoid sleep, leading to insufficient sleep. When they do sleep, the prior sleep deprivation can induce a REM sleep rebound that actually worsens nightmares. This negative cycle can cause some people with frequent nightmares to experience insomnia as a chronic sleep problem.

For this reason, people who have nightmares more than once a week, have fragmented sleep, or have daytime sleepiness or changes to their thinking or mood should talk with a doctor Trusted Source Medline Plus MedlinePlus is an online health information resource for patients and their families and friends. View Source . A doctor can review these symptoms to identify the potential causes and treatments of their sleeping problem.

For people who want to document or interpret dreams, remembering them is a key first step. The ability to recall dreams can be different for every person and may vary based on age Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source . While there’s no guaranteed way to improve dream recall, experts recommend certain tips Trusted Source American Psychological Association (APA) APA is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States, with more than 121,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members. View Source :

• Think about your dreams as soon as you wake up. Dreams can be forgotten in the blink of an eye, so you want to make remembering them the first thing you do when you wake up. Before sitting up or even saying good morning to your bed partner, close your eyes and try to replay your dreams in your mind.
• Have a journal or app on-hand to keep track of your dream content. It’s important to have a method to quickly record dream details before you can forget them, including if you wake up from a dream in the night. For most people, a pen and paper on their nightstand works well, but there are also smartphone apps that help you create an organized and searchable dream journal.
• Try to wake up peacefully in the morning. An abrupt awakening, such as from an alarm clock, may cause you to quickly snap awake and out of a dream, making it harder to remember the dream’s details.
• Remind yourself that dream recall is a priority. In the lead-up to bedtime, tell yourself that you will remember your dreams, and repeat this mantra before going to sleep. While this alone can’t ensure that you will recall your dreams, it can encourage you to remember to take the time to reflect on dreams before starting your day.

People with frequent nightmares that disturb sleep should talk with a doctor who can determine if they have nightmare disorder or any other condition affecting their sleep quality. Treatment for nightmare disorder often includes talk therapy that attempts to counteract negative thinking, stress, and anxiety that can worsen nightmares.

Many types of talk therapy attempt to reduce worries or fears, including those that can arise in nightmares. This type of exposure or desensitization therapy helps many patients reframe their emotional reaction to negative imagery since trying to simply suppress negative thoughts may exacerbate nightmares Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source .

Another step in trying to reduce nightmares is to improve sleep hygiene , which includes both sleep-related habits and the bedroom environment . Healthy sleep hygiene can make your nightly sleep more predictable and may help you sleep soundly through the night even if you have bad dreams. Examples of healthy sleep tips include:

• Follow a stable sleep schedule: Keep a steady schedule every day, including on weekends or other days when you don’t have to wake up at a certain time.
• Choose pre-bed content carefully: Avoid scary, distressing, or stimulating content in the hours before bed since it may provoke negative thoughts during sleep.
• Wind down each night: Exercising during the day Trusted Source Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. View Source can help you sleep better at night. In the evening, try to allow your mind and body to calmly relax before bed such as with light stretching, deep breathing, or other relaxation techniques.
• Limit alcohol and caffeine: Drinking alcohol can cause more concentrated REM sleep later in the night, heightening the risk of nightmares. Caffeine is a stimulant that can throw off your sleep schedule and keep your brain wired when you want to doze off.
• Block out bedroom distractions: Try to foster a sleeping environment that is dark, quiet, smells nice, and has a comfortable temperature. A supportive mattress and pillow can make your bed more inviting and cozy. All of these factors make it easier to feel calm and to prevent unwanted awakenings that can trigger irregular sleep patterns.
• Study Finds Bedtime Procrastination Impacts Sleep Quality
• Only Murders While You’re Sleeping: The Parasomnia Defense
• Crime Risk and Depression Differentially Relate to Aspects of Sleep
• Mechanism During Sleep Found to Determine Which Memories Last

About Our Editorial Team

Eric Suni, Staff Writer

Medically Reviewed by

Alex Dimitriu, Psychiatrist MD

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Read About The Science Of Dreams

How Long Do Dreams Last?

False Awakenings

Lucid Dream Masks: Do They Work?

How to Interpret Your Dreams

Recurring Dreams

What Do Sex Dreams Mean?

Vivid Dreams Explained

What Does It Mean When You Dream About Your Ex?

How Trauma Affects Dreams

Do Blind People Dream?

Dreams About Teeth Falling Out? 7 Possible Meanings

What is a Fever Dream?

Is Lucid Dreaming Dangerous?

How to Lucid Dream: Expert Tips and Tricks

What Is a Dream Journal Used For?

What Are Precognitive (Premonition) Dreams?

How Do Dreams Affect Sleep?

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80 fascinating psychology research questions for your next project

Last updated

15 February 2024

Reviewed by

Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L

Short on time? Get an AI generated summary of this article instead

Psychology research is essential for furthering our understanding of human behavior and improving the diagnosis and treatment of psychological conditions.

When psychologists know more about how different social and cultural factors influence how humans act, think, and feel, they can recommend improvements to practices in areas such as education, sport, healthcare, and law enforcement.

Below, you will find 80 research question examples across 16 branches of psychology. First, though, let’s look at some tips to help you select a suitable research topic.

• How to choose a good psychology research topic

Psychology has many branches that break down further into topics. Choosing a topic for your psychology research paper can be daunting because there are so many to choose from. It’s an important choice, as the topic you select will open up a range of questions to explore.

The tips below can help you find a psychology research topic that suits your skills and interests.

Tip #1: Select a topic that interests you

Passion and interest should fuel every research project. A topic that fascinates you will most likely interest others as well. Think about the questions you and others might have and decide on the issues that matter most. Draw on your own interests, but also keep your research topical and relevant to others.

Don’t limit yourself to a topic that you already know about. Instead, choose one that will make you want to know more and dig deeper. This will keep you motivated and excited about your research.

Tip #2: Choose a topic with a manageable scope

If your topic is too broad, you can get overwhelmed by the amount of information available and have trouble maintaining focus. On the other hand, you may find it difficult to find enough information if you choose a topic that is too narrow.

To determine if the topic is too broad or too narrow, start researching as early as possible. If you find there’s an overwhelming amount of research material, you’ll probably need to narrow the topic down. For example, instead of researching the general population, it might be easier to focus on a specific age group. Ask yourself what area of the general topic interests you most and focus on that.

If your scope is too narrow, try to generalize or focus on a larger related topic. Expand your search criteria or select additional databases for information. Consider if the topic is too new to have much information published on it as well.

Tip #3: Select a topic that will produce useful and relevant insights

Doing some preliminary research will reveal any existing research on the topic. If there is existing research, will you be able to produce new insights? You might need to focus on a different area or see if the existing research has limitations that you can overcome.

Bear in mind that finding new information from which to draw fresh insights may be impossible if your topic has been over-researched.

You’ll also need to consider whether your topic is relevant to current trends and needs. For example, researching psychology topics related to social media use may be highly relevant today.

• 80 psychology research topics and questions

Psychology is a broad subject with many branches and potential areas of study. Here are some of them:

Developmental

Personality

Experimental

Organizational

Educational

Neuropsychology

Controversial topics

Below we offer some suggestions on research topics and questions that can get you started. Keep in mind that these are not all-inclusive but should be personalized to fit the theme of your paper.

Social psychology research topics and questions

Social psychology has roots as far back as the 18th century. In simple terms, it’s the study of how behavior is influenced by the presence and behavior of others. It is the science of finding out who we are, who we think we are, and how our perceptions affect ourselves and others. It looks at personalities, relationships, and group behavior.

Here are some potential research questions and paper titles for this topic:

How does social media use impact perceptions of body image in male adolescents?

2. Is childhood bullying a risk factor for social anxiety in adults?

Is homophobia in individuals caused by genetic or environmental factors?

What is the most important psychological predictor of a person’s willingness to donate to charity?

Does a person’s height impact how other people perceive them? If so, how?

Cognitive psychology research questions

Cognitive psychology is the branch that focuses on the interactions of thinking, emotion, creativity, and problem-solving. It also explores the reasons humans think the way they do.

This topic involves exploring how people think by measuring intelligence, thoughts, and cognition. 

Here are some research question ideas:

6. Is there a link between chronic stress and memory function?

7. Can certain kinds of music trigger memories in people with memory loss?

8. Do remote meetings impact the efficacy of team decision-making?

9. Do word games and puzzles slow cognitive decline in adults over the age of 80?

10. Does watching television impact a child’s reading ability?

Developmental psychology research questions

Developmental psychology is the study of how humans grow and change over their lifespan. It usually focuses on the social, emotional, and physical development of babies and children, though it can apply to people of all ages. Developmental psychology is important for understanding how we learn, mature, and adapt to changes.

Here are some questions that might inspire your research:

11. Does grief accelerate the aging process?

12. How do parent–child attachment patterns influence the development of emotion regulation in teenagers?

13. Does bilingualism affect cognitive decline in adults over the age of 70?

14. How does the transition to adulthood impact decision-making abilities

15. How does early exposure to music impact mental health and well-being in school-aged children?

Personality psychology research questions

Personality psychology studies personalities, how they develop, their structures, and the processes that define them. It looks at intelligence, disposition, moral beliefs, thoughts, and reactions.

The goal of this branch of psychology is to scientifically interpret the way personality patterns manifest into an individual’s behaviors. Here are some example research questions:

16. Nature vs. nurture: Which impacts personality development the most?

17. The role of genetics on personality: Does an adopted child take on their biological parents’ personality traits?

18. How do personality traits influence leadership styles and effectiveness in organizational settings?

19. Is there a relationship between an individual’s personality and mental health?

20. Can a chronic illness affect your personality?

Abnormal psychology research questions

As the name suggests, abnormal psychology is a branch that focuses on abnormal behavior and psychopathology (the scientific study of mental illness or disorders).

Abnormal behavior can be challenging to define. Who decides what is “normal”? As such, psychologists in this area focus on the level of distress that certain behaviors may cause, although this typically involves studying mental health conditions such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and phobias.

Here are some questions to consider:

21. How does technology impact the development of social anxiety disorder?

22. What are the factors behind the rising incidence of eating disorders in adolescents?

23. Are mindfulness-based interventions effective in the treatment of PTSD?

24. Is there a connection between depression and gambling addiction?

25. Can physical trauma cause psychopathy?

Clinical psychology research questions

Clinical psychology deals with assessing and treating mental illness or abnormal or psychiatric behaviors. It differs from abnormal psychology in that it focuses more on treatments and clinical aspects, while abnormal psychology is more behavioral focused.

This is a specialty area that provides care and treatment for complex mental health conditions. This can include treatment, not only for individuals but for couples, families, and other groups. Clinical psychology also supports communities, conducts research, and offers training to promote mental health. This category is very broad, so there are lots of topics to explore.

Below are some example research questions to consider:

26. Do criminals require more specific therapies or interventions?

27. How effective are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in treating mental health disorders?

28. Are there any disadvantages to humanistic therapy?

29. Can group therapy be more beneficial than one-on-one therapy sessions?

30. What are the factors to consider when selecting the right treatment plan for patients with anxiety?

Experimental psychology research questions

Experimental psychology deals with studies that can prove or disprove a hypothesis. Psychologists in this field use scientific methods to collect data on basic psychological processes such as memory, cognition, and learning. They use this data to test the whys and hows of behavior and how outside factors influence its creation.

Areas of interest in this branch relate to perception, memory, emotion, and sensation. The below are example questions that could inspire your own research:

31. Do male or female parents/carers have a more calming influence on children?

32. Will your preference for a genre of music increase the more you listen to it?

33. What are the psychological effects of posting on social media vs. not posting?

34. How is productivity affected by social connection?

35. Is cheating contagious?

Organizational psychology research questions

Organizational psychology studies human behavior in the workplace. It is most frequently used to evaluate an employee, group, or a company’s organizational dynamics. Researchers aim to isolate issues and identify solutions.

This area of study can be beneficial to both employees and employers since the goal is to improve the overall work environment and experience. Researchers apply psychological principles and findings to recommend improvements in performance, communication, job satisfaction, and safety. 

Some potential research questions include the following:

36. How do different leadership styles affect employee morale?

37. Do longer lunch breaks boost employee productivity?

38. Is gender an antecedent to workplace stress?

39. What is the most effective way to promote work–life balance among employees?

40. How do different organizational structures impact the effectiveness of communication, decision-making, and productivity?

Forensic psychology research questions

Some questions to consider exploring in this branch of psychology are:

41. How does incarceration affect mental health?

42. Is childhood trauma a driver for criminal behavior during adulthood?

43. Are people with mental health conditions more likely to be victims of crimes?

44. What are the drivers of false memories, and how do they impact the justice system?

45. Is the media responsible for copycat crimes?

Educational psychology research questions

Educational psychology studies children in an educational setting. It covers topics like teaching methods, aptitude assessment, self-motivation, technology, and parental involvement.

Research in this field of psychology is vital for understanding and optimizing learning processes. It informs educators about cognitive development, learning styles, and effective teaching strategies.

Here are some example research questions:

46. Are different teaching styles more beneficial for children at different times of the day?

47. Can listening to classical music regularly increase a student’s test scores?

48. Is there a connection between sugar consumption and knowledge retention in students?

49. Does sleep duration and quality impact academic performance?

50. Does daily meditation at school influence students’ academic performance and mental health?

Sports psychology research question examples

Sport psychology aims to optimize physical performance and well-being in athletes by using cognitive and behavioral practices and interventions. Some methods include counseling, training, and clinical interventions.

Research in this area is important because it can improve team and individual performance, resilience, motivation, confidence, and overall well-being

Here are some research question ideas for you to consider:

51. How can a famous coach affect a team’s performance?

52. How can athletes control negative emotions in violent or high-contact sports?

53. How does using social media impact an athlete’s performance and well-being?

54. Can psychological interventions help with injury rehabilitation?

55. How can mindfulness practices boost sports performance?

Cultural psychology research question examples

The premise of this branch of psychology is that mind and culture are inseparable. In other words, people are shaped by their cultures, and their cultures are shaped by them. This can be a complex interaction.

Cultural psychology is vital as it explores how cultural context shapes individuals’ thoughts, behaviors, and perceptions. It provides insights into diverse perspectives, promoting cross-cultural understanding and reducing biases.

Here are some ideas that you might consider researching:

56. Are there cultural differences in how people perceive and deal with pain?

57. Are different cultures at increased risk of developing mental health conditions?

58. Are there cultural differences in coping strategies for stress?

59. Do our different cultures shape our personalities?

60. How does multi-generational culture influence family values and structure?

Health psychology research question examples

Health psychology is a crucial field of study. Understanding how psychological factors influence health behaviors, adherence to medical treatments, and overall wellness enables health experts to develop effective interventions and preventive measures, ultimately improving health outcomes.

Health psychology also aids in managing stress, promoting healthy behaviors, and optimizing mental health, fostering a holistic approach to well-being.

Here are five ideas to inspire research in this field:

61. How can health psychology interventions improve lifestyle behaviors to prevent cardiovascular diseases?

62. What role do social norms play in vaping among adolescents?

63. What role do personality traits play in the development and management of chronic pain conditions?

64. How do cultural beliefs and attitudes influence health-seeking behaviors in diverse populations?

65. What are the psychological factors influencing the adherence to preventive health behaviors, such as vaccination and regular screenings?

Neuropsychology research paper question examples

Neuropsychology research explores how a person’s cognition and behavior are related to their brain and nervous system. Researchers aim to advance the diagnosis and treatment of behavioral and cognitive effects of neurological disorders.

Researchers may work with children facing learning or developmental challenges, or with adults with declining cognitive abilities. They may also focus on injuries or illnesses of the brain, such as traumatic brain injuries, to determine the effect on cognitive and behavioral functions.

Neuropsychology informs diagnosis and treatment strategies for conditions such as dementia, traumatic brain injuries, and psychiatric disorders. Understanding the neural basis of behavior enhances our ability to optimize cognitive functioning, rehabilitate people with brain injuries, and improve patient care.

Here are some example research questions to consider:

66. How do neurotransmitter imbalances in specific brain regions contribute to mood disorders such as depression?

67. How can a traumatic brain injury affect memory?

68. What neural processes underlie attention deficits in people with ADHD?

69. Do medications affect the brain differently after a traumatic brain injury?

70. What are the behavioral effects of prolonged brain swelling?

Psychology of religion research question examples

The psychology of religion is a field that studies the interplay between belief systems, spirituality, and mental well-being. It explores the application of the psychological methods and interpretive frameworks of religious traditions and how they relate to both religious and non-religious people.

Psychology of religion research contributes to a holistic understanding of human experiences. It fosters cultural competence and guides therapeutic approaches that respect diverse spiritual beliefs.

Here are some example research questions in this field:

71. What impact does a religious upbringing have on a child’s self-esteem?

72. How do religious beliefs shape decision-making and perceptions of morality?

73. What is the impact of religious indoctrination?

74. Is there correlation between religious and mindfulness practices?

75. How does religious affiliation impact attitudes towards mental health treatment and help-seeking behaviors?

Controversial topics in psychology research question examples

Some psychology topics don’t fit into any of the subcategories above, but they may still be worthwhile topics to consider. These topics are the ones that spark interest, conversation, debate, and disagreement. They are often inspired by current issues and assess the validity of older research.

Consider some of these research question examples:

76. How does the rise in on-screen violence impact behavior in adolescents.

77. Should access to social media platforms be restricted in children under the age of 12 to improve mental health?

78. Are prescription mental health medications over-prescribed in older adults? If so, what are the effects of this?

79. Cognitive biases in AI: what are the implications for decision-making?

80. What are the psychological and ethical implications of using virtual reality in exposure therapy for treating trauma-related conditions?

• Inspiration for your next psychology research project

You can choose from a diverse range of research questions that intersect and overlap across various specialties.

From cognitive psychology to clinical studies, each inquiry contributes to a deeper understanding of the human mind and behavior. Importantly, the relevance of these questions transcends individual disciplines, as many findings offer insights applicable across multiple areas of study.

As health trends evolve and societal needs shift, new topics emerge, fueling continual exploration and discovery. Diving into this ever-changing and expanding area of study enables you to navigate the complexities of the human experience and pave the way for innovative solutions to the challenges of tomorrow.

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