Paranormal Dreaming

Research conducted with blind studies has provided results that people can accurately dream about events or other people, or, that people can dream about a future event. What is the next step in this research to show that these phenomena are global and stable?

Ontogenetic Patterns in Female Dreams

Current reseach by Allyson Dale at Ottawa University exams the pattern of female dreams across their lifespan. This study has an N=375 from adolescence to old age. What would be the value of this study and what are the long-term implications of the findings?

Gaming and Dreams

Research by Gackenback et al (2007) found that the continuity hypothesis of dreaming was supported with gamers. That is, that what people do in the day will show up as imagery in their dreams. The more emotionally salient the waking day events, the more likely people will dream about the events as imagery. Can there be any long-term effects of this phenomena with respect to gaming and if so, how might that occur? Also, are there benefits or detriments expected from this?

Dream Intensity

One of the important indicators of dreams is the "intensity" of the imagery and emotions. This function is important because it triggers waking day connections for the dreamer, it provides important information to researchers about the dream, and is a function that can be explored for clinical purposes. Calvin Yu (2010) published the Dream Intensity Profile which is a scale useful for evaluating components of dream intensity as clinical markers. This research provided strong evidence that the scale of dream intensity can predict specific disorders. Comment on this finding and how research should progress in terms of clinic applicablity.

Current Study

A current study examined sleep mentation (dreaming) during NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep in relation to brain activation (measured using functional imaging). The general findings suggested that by using machine-learning models for decoding neural activation, it is possible to determine the content of dream imagery by examining brain activation (Horikawa, Tamaki, Miyawaki, & Kamitani, 2013). How might this be useful in research, clinical practice, or popular culture?