Month: December 2024

In my work is an experiential and dream therapist, I often invite my clients to enter their dreams, allowing their nocturnal imagery to re-form in their mind’s eye. Most people I ask can do this quite easily, and some produce a virtual torrent of imagery. But not everyone can, and I used to think of this as an ability that varies but can be developed. What I have recently discovered is that there are some people born without the ability to visualize memories, imaginary scenes or future scenarios. Interestingly, this condition, called aphantasia, does not prevent people from dreaming, but their ability to voluntarily bring images to mind is absent.

Do you have aphantasia? When you close your eyes and try to picture a sunset, what do you see? For most of us, a mental canvas springs to life – gorgeous hues of glowing red and orange spread across the horizon. But for roughly 2-5% of the population, this simple act of visualization is impossible. For those with aphantasia, the mind’s eye is effectively blind. And with it, some of their ability to process emotion appears to be affected as well.

One proposed function of imagery, used often by therapists, is to render memories, dreams and thoughts more emotionally evocative through sensory simulation. Wicken and colleages (2019) tested this theory using aphantasics. “After using multi-method verification of aphantasia, we show that this condition, but not the general population, is associated with a flat-line physiological response to frightening written, but not perceptual scenarios.” This finding supports imagery’s critical role in evoking and processing emotion.

 

Aphantasia: A broad spectrum

The term aphantasia was coined by cognitive neurologist Professor Adam Zeman in 2015. Zeman (2024) places the vividness of ability to create internal imagery on a spectrum – from those who have no ability to visualize to those who experience hyperphantasia, an unusual abundance of mental imagery. He notes increasing evidence that aphantasics have some distinctive traits such as reduced autobiographical memory and face recognition, a greater interest in scientific occupations, and a greater propensity for autism. He suggests variation in neural connectivity may be the cause. Interestingly, those with aphantasia still experience dream imagery – possibly because our nocturnal imaginings are largely involuntary.

Zeman wrote: “Despite the profound contrast in subjective experience between aphantasia and hyperphantasia, the effects on everyday functioning are subtle – lack of imagery does not imply lack of imagination.”

 

Picture a safe place…

Meet Sarah (name changed), an architect who discovered her aphantasia during a particularly awkward moment in therapy. “My therapist asked me to close my eyes and picture my safe place. I sat there for what felt like an eternity, trying to explain that while I understood the concept of creating the image of a warm, protected place, I couldn’t actually ‘see’ one. She thought I was being resistant to the treatment. That’s when I realized I was different from most people.”

The irony of an architect who can’t visualize buildings isn’t lost on Sarah. “People assume I must be in the wrong profession, but I’ve developed other ways to think about space and design. I work with physical models and CAD software. My inability to visualize actually makes me more methodical and precise in my approach.” This notion is supported by research that shows visual working memory tasks are not impaired in those with aphantasia, they simpy use different strategies to work through questions most of us would visualize.

 

Causes unclear, but treatment not necessary

The scientific community is still unraveling the many outstanding mysteries of aphantasia. It appears to be linked to reduced connectivity between the frontal and visual networks in the brain. But the cause of this disconnection is not clear. Most cases appear to be congenital, while others develop after trauma or injury. Dr. Rebecca Keogh’s (2018) research at the University of New South Wales suggests there might be a genetic component, though the inheritance pattern remains unclear.

The condition exists on a spectrum. Some aphantasics report complete inability to generate any sensory imagery – not just visual, but auditory, olfactory, and tactile as well. Others might have partial imagery abilities or can experience involuntary images in dreams, despite being unable to consciously conjure them while awake.

Currently, there is no established treatment for aphantasia, primarily because it’s not classified as a disorder or disability. Aphantasics excel in fields from science to literature. For example Craig Venter, one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome, is aphantasic. His inability to visualize didn’t prevent him from making groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

The discovery of aphantasia has sparked fascinating philosophical questions about consciousness, creativity, and the nature of thought itself. How essential is mental imagery to human experience? Can abstract thinking compensate for the lack of visual imagination? These questions are driving new research in cognitive science and challenging our assumptions about how the mind works.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of aphantasia is how it remained largely unrecognized until recently. People with aphantasia often assume everyone experiences thought the same way they do – through conceptual understanding rather than mental imagery. It’s like discovering that while you’ve been watching a black and white TV all your life, others have been watching in color. For those curious about their own visualization abilities, researchers have developed various assessment tools, including the VVIQ (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire). However, measuring something as subjective as mental imagery remains challenging.

As we advance our knowledge of aphantasia, the focus shouldn’t be on “fixing” what isn’t broken, but rather on understanding and accommodating different ways of thinking. Sarah puts it eloquently: “Having aphantasia isn’t like missing a limb – it’s more like being left-handed in a right-handed world. Once you figure out your own way of doing things, it stops being an obstacle and becomes just another part of who you are.”

 

References:

Arcangeli, M. (2023). Aphantasia demystified. Synthese, 201(2), 31.

Blomkvist, A., & Marks, D. F. (2023). Defining and ‘diagnosing’aphantasia: Condition or individual difference? Cortex, 169, 220-234.

Blomkvist, A. (2023). Aphantasia: In search of a theory. Mind & Language, 38(3), 866-888.

Dance, C. J., Ipser, A., & Simner, J. (2022). The prevalence of aphantasia (imagery weakness) in the general population. Consciousness and Cognition, 97, 103243.

Dawes, A. J., Keogh, R., Andrillon, T., & Pearson, J. (2020). A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia. Scientific reports, 10(1), 10022.

Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2018). The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia. Cortex, 105, 53-60.

McKelvie, S. J. (1995). The VVIQ and beyond: Vividness and its measurement.

Whiteley, C. M. (2021). Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming. Philosophical Studies, 178(6), 2111-2132.Wicken, M., Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2019). The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: Insights from aphantasia. biorxiv, 726844.

Zeman, A., Dewar, M., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia. Cortex, 73, 378-380.

Zeman, A. (2024). Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

How Technology is Making Our Dream Worlds More Accessible and Malleable

One aspect of dreams that makes them so mysterious is that they are notoriously difficult to study. While those who dream vividly or lucidly can accurately report their detailed dream content, most of us imperfectly capture fragments of our dreams and are left with a sense that there was so much more in our dream than we could capture. The longer we wait to document a dream, the more distorted and incomplete the dream report is likely to be.

As someone who works with dreams in clinical practice, this is not necessarily a problem. I have found that the most striking dream elements, those that break through sleep and enter consciousness, are often the most important dream events to process in sessions. Forgetting is like a natural editing process. Those with high recall who dream frequently and vividly tend to have too much material, and it can be overwhelming to sort through it all. Interestingly, when we do experiential dreamwork with highly active dreamers, their dream lives tend to quiet down – possibly because as we re-enter and metabolize dreams while awake, there is less emotional processing needed at night.

But I digress… while dream clinicians are less concerned about how closely dream reports reflect actual dreams, those who study dreams themselves really do need completeness and accuracy. Researchers have tried many ways to open up the ‘black box’ of dreaming, and with the help of a confluence of technologies, they are starting to have success.

In a review article, Remy Mallett and colleagues (2024) describe the most important current advancements for capturing, manipulating and studying dreams. Some of these ideas may apply clinically as well, especially for those who want to recall more dreams or learn how to change their dream content (more on this later). The article states, “these innovations herald a new era in dream science.” The review identifies three main areas of advancement that, taken together, are helping dream researchers to move beyond the limitations of subjective post-sleep reports to embrace more objective and scientifically rigorous approaches.

New Ways to Observe Dreams in Real Time

The first is observable dreaming, which represents a significant breakthrough in our ability to “witness” dreams as they occur. Through neural decoding techniques, researchers can now identify dream content by analyzing brain activity patterns. This approach is complemented by real-time reporting through lucid dreaming, enabling direct communication with dreamers during their dream experiences. As well, physiological measures such as eye movements and muscle activity are providing valuable insights into dream content, offering objective markers of subjective experiences.

Engineering Changes in Dreams While Dreaming

Dream engineering, the second major advance, introduces methods to actively influence and shape dream content. Through sensory stimulation during sleep, researchers can now guide dream narratives in specific directions. Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR) has emerged as one promising technique, allowing for the strategic activation of specific memories or associations during sleep to influence dream content. For example, a recent study was able to use sound to enhance the effects of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) – which basically involves rescripting the ending of nightmares. The reseachers paired piano chords with the dreamer’s imagined new dream ending, then played it back during the dreaming phases of sleep, and this improved the results of IRT (Schwartz et al., 2022).

Lucid dreaming serves as another powerful tool for dream manipulation, enabling participants to consciously direct their dream experiences. There has been increasing success in using technology to prompt lucid dreaming, a process called Targeted Lucidity Reactivation. The process includes pre-sleep conditioning to create a ‘lucidity mindset,’ a state of mind in which one is more likely to question the nature of their experience and ask, am I dreaming? When a sound associated with this mindset is played during REM/dream sleep, lucidity is triggered more often, even in novice lucid dreamers. Recently, this process was tailored for at home use via a phone app, and the results were impressive – tripling the incidence of lucidity in participants.

Analysis of Large Dream Databases

The third breakthrough comes in the form of computational analysis, which is transforming how we process and understand dream data. Big data approaches are revealing previously undetectable patterns in large collections of dream reports. Natural language processing tools are automating the analysis of dream content, making it possible to process vast amounts of dream narratives efficiently and systematically. Network analysis of dream reports has shown particular promise in clinical applications, potentially aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of various psychological conditions.

Clinical Applications

These advances offer strong potential for therapeutic applications. The article discusses particularly promising developments in the treatment of nightmares and PTSD. By combining traditional approaches like Imagery Rehearsal Therapy with dream engineering techniques, clinicians may have more effective tools for addressing sleep-related psychological distress. The ability to influence dream content directly could revolutionize how we approach trauma-related sleep disturbances and other dream-related psychological challenges.

What makes these advances particularly exciting is their complementary nature. While dream engineering provides tools for manipulating dream content, computational analysis helps us understand the patterns that emerge from these manipulations, and observable dreaming techniques offer ways to validate findings. This triangulation of methods strengthens the scientific validity of dream research and opens new avenues for understanding the relationship between dreaming and psychological well-being.

Challenges and Caveats

Several significant challenges remain in the field. The reliability of lucid dream induction remains inconsistent, limiting the broader applicability of this technique. Questions persist about whether findings from lucid dream research can be generalized to non-lucid dreams, which represent the majority of dream experiences. Current technology, while advancing rapidly, still has precision limitations that affect the ability to decode and influence dream content with high accuracy. Additionally, there are ongoing discussions about how best to assess dream incorporation – that is, how to measure the extent to which specific elements appear in dreams.

Looking forward, the field appears poised for further advances, spurred by the development of more sophisticated neural decoding techniques, improved methods for dream manipulation, and more powerful computational tools. While this is excellent for deepening the understanding of dreaming, I wonder how much manipulation of our dreams is truly helpful – or if the resulting dreams truly represent dreaming in its ‘wild’ state.

Are Hybrid States Authentic Dreaming?

When something like waking consciousness is added to dreaming, and we are aware of and able to manipulate our dream content, what results is a hybrid state of consciousness that is no longer natural dreaming. As someone who appreciates the healing power of dreams, even the intense ones, I have some concern about processes that shift the dream into something more palateable, possibly skipping the very processes the dream is trying to engender.

When I expressed this concern to Mallet, the article’s lead author, he said he tends to agree: everything in moderation. There is clearly a balance to be struck here, because anything that provides nightmare sufferers with some relief and restful sleep is a good thing.

Still, just because we can manipulate or become lucid in our dreams does not mean we should always do so. A study hot off the press (Carr et al., 2024) shows that caution and more information is needed. The researchers surveyed 1332 people about their dreams and mental health symptoms and found that the interaction between nightmares and lucid dreaming was a significant predictor of depressive symptoms. They also found that lucid dreaming predicts poor sleep quality, stress and anxiety, but that these latter symptoms could be accounted for by nightmares alone.

With a mix of caution and optimism, I welcome the advances researchers are making to better understand dreams. The pace of technological change is brisk, and it’s exciting to see the various new avenues it allows the study of dreams to take. So much of value can be learned. However, I am dubious about the prospect of opening up and altering our dream worlds too much – they are private, deep nocturnal experiences that have something of a wild nature I am reluctant to fully capture and tame.

 

References

Carr, M., Youngren, W., Seehuus, M., Semin, R., Angle, E., & Pigeon, W. R. (2024). The Effects of Lucid Dreaming and Nightmares on Sleep Quality and Mental Health Outcomes. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 1-8.

Konkoly, K. R., Whitmore, N. W., Mallett, R., Mazurek, C. Y., & Paller, K. A. (2024). Provoking lucid dreams at home with sensory cues paired with pre-sleep cognitive training. Consciousness and Cognition, 125, 103759.

Mallett, R., Konkoly, K. R., Nielsen, T., Carr, M., & Paller, K. A. (2024). New strategies for the cognitive science of dreaming. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Schwartz, S., Clerget, A., & Perogamvros, L. (2022). Enhancing imagery rehearsal therapy for nightmares with targeted memory reactivation. Current Biology, 32(22), 4808-4816.

One of the most enduring paradoxes in the field of dream research is the mystery of dream amnesia. Why do we forget most of our dreams, even though they’re often vivid, emotionally charged, and potentially important for our survival? A recent paper by Zhao and colleagues offers an elegant solution to this puzzle.

Here’s the conundrum: Many scientists believe dreams serve crucial biological functions, helping us rehearse responses to threats and practice social interactions. These experiences can be incredibly vivid and emotionally intense – yet most of us can barely remember our dreams unless we wake up right in the middle of one. This seems counterintuitive. If dreams are so important, shouldn’t we remember them clearly?

The answer lies in understanding how different types of memory work in our brains. The researchers propose that forgetting our dreams isn’t a bug – it’s a feature. Here’s why: If we retained vivid memories of our dreams, we might confuse them with real experiences. Imagine having a heated argument with your partner in a dream and waking up angry at them for something that never actually happened. Not ideal, right?

But here’s the clever part – while we may forget the specific content of our dreams, the skills and behaviors we practice during them can still benefit us. Think about it like learning to ride a bike: you don’t need to remember every practice session to maintain the skill. Similarly, when we rehearse dealing with threats or social situations in our dreams, our brains can retain the practical lessons without keeping the specific dream memories.

This explains why dream amnesia makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Our brains suppress the explicit, narrative memories of dreams to avoid confusion with real events, while preserving the implicit learning and skill development that occurred during the dream.

The system isn’t perfect – sometimes dreams do break through this forgetting mechanism, particularly when they’re highly emotional or frightening — most nightmares are easily recalled for example. But biological systems don’t need to work perfectly to be beneficial. The key is that dream amnesia helps us maintain a clear distinction between our dreaming and waking experiences while still allowing us to benefit from the practice and learning that occurs during our dreams. This group of reseachers are clear proponents of the idea that a major purpose of dreams is simulation. Other possible functions include memory consolidation, emotion processing and creative inspiration.

This new way of explaining dream amnesia provides a fresh perspective on the value of our forgotten dreams. Even though we may not remember them, our nightly adventures may continue to shape our skills and behaviors in subtle but important ways. So the next time you wake up with only fragments of a dream remaining, don’t worry about having lost the details. Possibly, as Zhao and collegaues suggest, the benefits of your dream experiences stay with you long after the memories fade.

 

Zhao, J., Schoch, S. F., Valli, K., & Dresler, M. (2024). Dream function and dream amnesia: dissolution of an apparent paradox. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 105951.