Sleep deprivation exhibits age-dependent effect on infra-slow global brain activity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.12.675828v1

🧠 The official website of the Neuroscience of Dreaming Summer School (4–8 May 2026, IMT School, Lucca, Italy) is now live: nodsummerschool.imtlucca.it

👉 Check out the confirmed speakers + our program overview. Detailed schedule and registration coming soon!

Our study challenges the assumption that no dream recall = unconsciousness. In ~50% of “no experience” reports, detailed questioning revealed conscious awareness without specific, reportable content. 🧠 + 💤

👉 More on this in the coming months...

Immersive dreaming may serve as an engrossing virtual simulation, similar to a Matrix, that shields the dreamer from potential sleep disruptions. This function may be essential for enabling sleep-dependent processes such as memory consolidation, which depend on transient neural reactivations.

We further show that perceived sleep depth increases progressively across the night, despite a physiological decline in both objective (slow-wave activity) and subjective (sleepiness) markers of sleep propensity. This divergence is explained by a parallel rise in dream immersiveness over time.

The deepest sleep is reported not only after unconscious states, but also following vividly immersive dreams. In contrast, minimal forms of consciousness lacking reportable mental content are consistently linked to the shallowest subjective sleep.

We find that dreaming significantly alters the mapping between cortical activation and perceived sleep depth: the typical negative association between high-frequency activity and sleep depth is attenuated when richly immersive dream experiences occur.

🚨 New preprint 🚨
"Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure." We analyzed 1,024 awakenings collected across 196 nights with high-density EEG (256 ch.) to explore the relationship between dreaming and subjective sleep depth.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🔔New preprint out!

We reviewed how RBD medications affect dream content.

Take home message: the need for standardization and methodological rigor in future studies.

“The effects of RBD Medications on Dream Content: A Critical Review of Evidence” is now available here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

💤🧠🧪 New article! 🧪🧠💤

After years of effort led by @qualiastructure.bsky.social (Nao Tsuchiya and William Wong), Jenny Windt, Katja Valli, Valdas Noreika and @rherzoga.bsky.social, the Dream database is now published in @natcomms.nature.com

**A dream EEG and mentation database**
rdcu.be/eAwni

Save the date!! 🗓️

The 2nd edition of the Summer School on the Neuroscience of Dreaming 💤 will take place 4–8 May 2026 in Lucca, Italy, at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca.

📍 The official website will be released soon: stay tuned for updates!

🧠💤 New from our lab in Communications Biology!

Grollero et al. "Affective information modulates slow-wave- and arousal-like responses during NREM sleep"

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

#sleep #sleepresearch

Key information:
• Duration: September 15, 2025 – June 14, 2026
• Mode of participation: blended (in-person and online)
• Scholarship amount: €10,000 each
• Additional benefits: travel reimbursement up to €3,000, free accommodation and meals during stays in Lucca
• Program completion: July 2027

📢 Applications are now open for the IMT Honors Program at IMT School: a funded academic opportunity for outstanding students enrolled in the first year of a Master’s degree or the penultimate year of a single-cycle program, in Italy or abroad. Deadline: July 3, 2025.
www.imtlucca.it/en/education...

📄 New preprint! 🎊

Elce et al., "The semantics of dreams": www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We show that dream content is shaped by both wakefulness experiences and stable individual psychological/cognitive traits. 🌕

📢 The PhD call for "Mind, Brain, and Human Thought" (track: "Experimental Psychology and Psychophysiology") at the IMT School, Lucca is now open!

Join us in the Sleep, Plasticity, and Conscious Experience (SPACE) Lab to explore the science of sleep and dreaming. 🧠💤

Apply here 👉 mbht.imtlucca.it