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?