Daydreams incorporate recent waking life concerns but do not show delayed (‘dream-lag’) incorporations

Rijn, Elaine van; Reid, Alexander M.; Edwards, Christopher L.; Malinowski, Josie E.; Ruby, Perrine; Eichenlaub, Jean-Baptiste; Blagrove, Mark

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2017.10.011

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Where the Friedman test was significant, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare means of the three combined time periods that are used to test for the day-residue and dream-lag effects, namely the mean of 1 and 2 days, mean of 3 and 4 days, and mean of 5, 6 and 7 days. These periods were defined in advance and in accordance with the literature (Blagrove, Fouquet et al, 2011;Nielsen et al, 2004;van Rijn et al, 2015van Rijn et al, , 2018. Day-residue and dream-lag effects were predicted for the incorporation of PSEs; hence, the means of the number of PSE incorporations for the periods 1-2 days and 5-7 days F I G U R E 1 (a) Schematic of the experiment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns

Eichenlaub

Rijn

Phelan

et al. 2018

Journal of Sleep Research

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SummaryIncorporation of details from waking life events into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreams has been found to be highest on the 2 nights after, and then 5-7 nights after, the event. These are termed, respectively, the day-residue and dreamlag effects. This study is the first to categorize types of waking life experiences and compare their incorporation into dreams across multiple successive nights. Thirtyeight participants completed a daily diary each evening and a dream diary each morning for 14 days. In the daily diary, three categories of experiences were reported: major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs) and major concerns (MCs). After the 14-day period each participant identified the correspondence between items in their daily diaries and subsequent dream reports. The day-residue and dream-lag effects were found for the incorporation of PSEs into dreams (effect sizes of .33 and .27, respectively), but only for participants (n = 19) who had a below-median total number of correspondences between daily diary items and dream reports (termed "low-incorporators" as opposed to "high-incorporators"). Neither the day-residue or dream-lag effects were found for MDAs or MCs.This U-shaped timescale of incorporation of events from daily life into dreams has been proposed to reflect REM sleep-dependent memory consolidation, possibly related to emotional memory processing. This study had a larger sample size of dreams than any dream-lag study hitherto with trained participants. Coupled with previous successful replications, there is thus substantial evidence supporting the dream-lag effect and further explorations of its mechanism, including its neural underpinnings, are warranted.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns

Eichenlaub

Rijn

Phelan

et al. 2018

Journal of Sleep Research

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“…Studies evaluating which elements of waking events appear in dreams have shown that many dreams can be traced back to events occurring during the day preceding the dream -a phenomenon referred to as day-residue effect (de Saint-Denys, 1867; Nielsen and Powell, 1992). Some studies have also provided evidence for a dream-lag effect, that is, another temporal peak of integration of elements from events occurring about a week before the dream (Nielsen and Powell, 1992;Van Rijn et al, 2015;van Rijn et al, 2018). It remains open whether it is specific to certain types of events (Vallat et al, 2017;Veloce et al, 2019) and sleep stages (Blagrove et al, 2011).…”

Section: Dreams Are Associated With Reduced Reflective Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Apical drive—A cellular mechanism of dreaming?

Aru

Siclari

Phillips

et al. 2020

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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Dreams are internally generated experiences that occur independently of current sensory input. Here we argue, based on cortical anatomy and function, that dream experiences are tightly related to the workings of a specific part of cortical pyramidal neurons, the apical integration zone (AIZ). The AIZ receives and processes contextual information from diverse sources and could constitute a major switch point for transitioning from externally to internally generated experiences such as dreams. We propose that during dreams the output of certain pyramidal neurons is mainly driven by input into the AIZ. We call this mode of functioning "apical drive". Our hypothesis is based on the evidence that the cholinergic and adrenergic arousal systems, which show different dynamics between waking, slow wave sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep, have specific effects on the AIZ. We suggest that apical drive may also contribute to waking experiences, such as mental imagery. Future studies, investigating the different modes of apical function and their regulation during sleep and wakefulness are likely to be richly rewarded.

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“…Although waking experiences are not faithfully replayed in dreams ( Fosse et al , 2003 ), dream content arises from waking-life experiences ( Stickgold et al , 2001 ; Nielsen and Stenstrom, 2005 ; Eichenlaub et al , 2017 ). The notion that dreaming is connected with experiences of the immediately preceding days was described by Freud using the term ‘day-residues’ ( Freud, 1953 /1900), and, more recently, numerous studies have refined this phenomenon ( Nielsen and Powell, 1989 ; Powell et al , 1995 ; Nielsen et al , 2004 ; Schredl, 2006 ; Blagrove et al , 2011 a, b ; van Rijn et al , 2015 , 2018 ; Vallat et al , 2017 a). In addition, the nature of the daily experiences incorporated into dreams has been explored, highlighting that emotional and personally significant experiences are preferentially incorporated ( Cartwright et al , 1998 b, 2006 ; Schredl, 2006 ; Propper et al , 2007 ; Malinowski and Horton, 2014 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporation of recent waking-life experiences in dreams correlates with frontal theta activity in REM sleep

Eichenlaub

Rijn

Gaskell

et al. 2018

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and its main oscillatory feature, frontal theta, have been related to the processing of recent emotional memories. As memories constitute much of the source material for our dreams, we explored the link between REM frontal theta and the memory sources of dreaming, so as to elucidate the brain activities behind the formation of dream content. Twenty participants were woken for dream reports in REM and slow wave sleep (SWS) while monitored using electroencephalography. Eighteen participants reported at least one REM dream and 14 at least one SWS dream, and they, and independent judges, subsequently compared their dream reports with log records of their previous daily experiences. The number of references to recent waking-life experiences in REM dreams was positively correlated with frontal theta activity in the REM sleep period. No such correlation was observed for older memories, nor for SWS dreams. The emotional intensity of recent waking-life experiences incorporated into dreams was higher than the emotional intensity of experiences that were not incorporated. These results suggest that the formation of wakefulness-related dream content is associated with REM theta activity, and accords with theories that dreaming reflects emotional memory processing taking place in REM sleep.

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Daydreams incorporate recent waking life concerns but do not show delayed (‘dream-lag’) incorporations

Cited by 8 publications

References 52 publications

The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns

The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns

Apical drive—A cellular mechanism of dreaming?

Incorporation of recent waking-life experiences in dreams correlates with frontal theta activity in REM sleep

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