ArticleNature neuroscience2023
Behavioral and brain responses to verbal stimuli reveal transient periods of cognitive integration of the external world during sleep.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Influencing dreams through sensory stimulation: A systematic review.Sleep medicine reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Eye Tracking-Based Evaluation of Auditory Spatial Attention in a Virtual Auditory Environment: Protocol for Development of a New Approach and Preliminary Validation.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- Generalizability of EEG-Based DEMENTIA Classifiers: A Multicenter study of Alzheimer's, MCI, and FTD.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- REM sleep favors the restructuring of problem-related semantic associations.Communications biology · 2026Article
- EEG Brain Rhythms During Resting-State Wakefulness and Sleep in Elderly Expert Meditators.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Covert Consciousness: Epistemic Limits of Its Definition and Detection.Neurocritical care · 2026Review
- Atlas of intracranial electroencephalography complexity across cortical regions and global states of consciousness in the human brain.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Using Real-time Reporting to Investigate Visual Experiences in Dreams.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- How sleeping minds decide: State-specific reconfigurations of lexical decision-making.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- The Geometry of Layer 2/3 Cortical Sound Processing in Slow Wave Sleep.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- From detection to decision: a conceptual framework of uncertainty migration in disorders of consciousness.Frontiers in neurology · 2026Review
- Behavioral, experiential, and physiological signatures of mind blanking.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The Future of Parasomnias.Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- Dreaming conundrum.Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- The Disputable Costs of Sleeping.Biology · 2025Review
- A continuous approach to explain insomnia and subjective-objective sleep discrepancy.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Do individuals with disorders of consciousness dream and mind wander? Implications for improving diagnosis and understanding patient wellbeing.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- We are the Sensors of Consciousness! A Review and Analysis on How Awakenings During Sleep Influence Dream Recall.Nature and science of sleep · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Sleep has long been considered as a state of behavioral disconnection from the environment, without reactivity to external stimuli. Here we questioned this 'sleep disconnection' dogma by directly investigating behavioral responsiveness in 49 napping participants (27 with narcolepsy and 22 healthy volunteers) engaged in a lexical decision task. Participants were instructed to frown or smile depending on the stimulus type. We found accurate behavioral responses, visible via contractions of the corrugator or zygomatic muscles, in most sleep stages in both groups (except slow-wave sleep in healthy volunteers). Across sleep stages, responses occurred more frequently when stimuli were presented during high cognitive states than during low cognitive states, as indexed by prestimulus electroencephalography. Our findings suggest that transient windows of reactivity to external stimuli exist during bona fide sleep, even in healthy individuals. Such windows of reactivity could pave the way for real-time communication with sleepers to probe sleep-related mental and cognitive processes.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.