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We studied the within-person fluctuations in the prevalence and valence of affect across the wake-sleep cycle with a focus on waking mind-wandering and night-time dreaming. We also compared participants’ self-ratings of affect with external ratings of affective experiences described in verbal reports regarding the same episodes.

Data from the first reported attempt of the Dream Catcher test. Wong, W., Noreika, V., Móró, L., Revonsuo, A., Windt, J., Valli, K., & Tsuchiya, N. (2020). The Dream Catcher experiment: Blinded analyses failed to detect markers of dreaming consciousness in EEG spectral power. "Neuroscience of Consciousness". https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaa006

The coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) pandemic poses a major threat to public health and has a large impact on the daily experiences and mental well-being of individuals across the world. Surveys show that a significant percentage of people are concerned about themselves or their family members contracting the virus. These concerns, together with social isolation, are associated with increased levels of mental health issues, such as stress, anxiety, and depression. Despite a surge of empirical studies on COVID-19 related experiences, almost all the studies have been survey studies focusing on peoples’ evaluations of their daily life experiences. However, it is important to investigate how this event has influenced peoples’ subjective experiences across different states of consciousness with a focus on the actual mental content of those experiences. As such, the overall aim of the study is to investigate the mental content of different states of consciousness – dreaming and mind-wandering – during and after COVID-19. The study is carried out online and anonymously via the following website: https://sites.utu.fi/mind/en/ In this pre-reg we fork to an analysis of graph theory metrics of the dream and mindwandering reports.

Funder: Signe ja Ane Gyllenbergin Säätiö (Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004325, Recently, cortical correlates of specific dream contents have been reported, such as the activation of the sensorimotor cortex during dreamed hand clenching. Yet, despite a close resemblance of such activation patterns to those seen during the corresponding wakeful behaviour, the causal mechanisms underlying specific dream contents remain largely elusive. Here, we aimed to investigate the causal role of the sensorimotor cortex in generating movement and bodily sensations during REM sleep dreaming. Following bihemispheric transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or sham stimulation, guided by functional mapping of the primary motor cortex, naive participants were awakened from REM sleep and responded to a questionnaire on bodily sensations in dreams. Electromyographic (EMG) and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were used to quantify physiological changes during the preceding REM period. We found that tDCS, compared to sham stimulation, significantly decreased reports of dream movement, especially of repetitive actions. Other types of bodily experiences, such as tactile or vestibular sensations, were not affected by tDCS, confirming the specificity of stimulation effects to movement sensations. In addition, tDCS reduced EEG interhemispheric coherence in parietal areas and affected the phasic EMG correlation between both arms. These findings show that a complex temporal reorganization of the motor network co-occurred with the reduction of dream movement, revealing a link between central and peripheral motor processes and movement sensations of the dream self. tDCS over the sensorimotor cortex interferes with dream movement during REM sleep, which is consistent with a causal contribution to dream experience and has broader implications for understanding the neural basis of self-experience in dreams.