ArticlePloS one2022
Constructive episodic simulation in dreams.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Experimentally manipulating dream content by reactivating a remote emotional memory.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- The American dream: Election night dreams predict overnight change in feelings about the election and the future.PloS one · 2026Article
- Sustaining transformations in psychoanalysis: an interdisciplinary case study on trauma, dreams, and memory reconsolidation.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- We are the Sensors of Consciousness! A Review and Analysis on How Awakenings During Sleep Influence Dream Recall.Nature and science of sleep · 2025Article
- Experimentally inducing dreams of remote emotional memory.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Article
- Is episodic-like memoryPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Consciousness and sleep.Neuron · 2024Review
- Peering into the future: Eye movements predict neural repetition effects during episodic simulation.Neuropsychologia · 2024Article
- Memory updating in dreams.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2024Article
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- Dreamers' evaluation of the emotional valence of their day-to-day dreams is indicative of some mood regulation function.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Memories of the past help us adaptively respond to similar situations in the future. Originally described by Schacter & Addis in 2007, the "constructive episodic simulation" hypothesis proposes that waking thought combines fragments of various past episodes into imagined simulations of events that may occur in the future. This same framework may be useful for understanding the function of dreaming. N = 48 college students were asked to identify waking life sources for a total of N = 469 dreams. Participants frequently traced dreams to at least one past or future episodic source (53.5% and 25.7% of dreams, respectively). Individual dreams were very often traced to multiple waking sources (43.9% of all dreams with content), with fragments of past memory incorporated into scenarios that anticipated future events. Waking-life dream sources are described in terms of their phenomenology and distribution across time and sleep stage, providing new evidence that dreams not only reflect the past, but also utilize memory in simulating potential futures.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.