Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Dreamscape (The Electrophysiological Landscape of Dreams)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2025-06-30
Why and how do we dream? Although this question has fascinated humankind since the earliest ages, it remains largely unanswered. Each night, when we fall asleep, we progressively disengage from the external world until we cease to sense it and to act upon it. Despite this disconnection from the environment, in our dreams we have vivid sensations and engage in actions. Although we do so in a purely imaginary world, our dream experiences bear so much resemblance with the real world that we almost invariably take them for real. How does the brain create such a real-world analogue, and why? The project Dreamscape proposes to answer this question by studying a set of brain potentials, recorded with electroencephalography (EEG), which not only occur spontaneously during dreams, but in a similar form also in response to sensory stimuli during sleep and wakefulness. The overarching objective of Dreamscape is to understand the precise role of these brain potentials in the generation of dreams.
Specifically, the project will 1) provide a systematic characterization of these potentials in the sleeping and waking brain, 2) clarify their relation to arousal systems, 3) assess how they relate to sensory and motor features of dreams and 4) manipulate them to causally affect dreams. It will employ a unique combination of cutting-edge experimental approaches, including 256-channel-high-density EEG sleep recordings combined with controlled sensory stimulations, serial awakening paradigms, pharmacological manipulations, closed-loop acoustic slow wave modulation and movement analyses in neurological patients who act out their dreams.
The project will contribute to the basic understanding of how and why we dream, with implications for the fields of consciousness, neuroscience and neuropsychiatry. It will also provide technological and pharmacological tools to manipulate sleep and dreams, with clinical relevance for patients with sleep disorders.