SPACE Lab

The Effects of RBD Medications on Dream Content: A Critical Review of Evidence REM sleep behavior disorder, often an early marker of α-synucleinopathies, is characterized by the loss of REM-related muscle atonia and the occurrenc…

New review from the Lab: Bontempi et al., "The Effects of RBD Medications on Dream Content: A Critical Review of Evidence"

💊 "Available evidence offers only limited support for clonazepam, melatonin, and pramipexole in reducing disturbing dream content"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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

Bidirectional modulation of sleep and wakefulness via prefrontal cortical chemogenetics The drive to sleep is inescapable but its biological substrate remains largely elusive. Until recently, the search for sleep centres in the mammalian brain focussed on subcortical neurons that promote...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neuroscience of Dreaming - Summer School May 4-8, 2026 @ IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy

🧠 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.

Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure Perceived sleep depth is a key determinant of subjective sleep quality, traditionally thought to reflect unconsciousness and reduced cortical activation. Here, we combined high-density EEG with a seri...

🚨 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...

Illustration from Ana Yael https://www.anayael.com/

💤🧠🧪 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!

Affective information modulates slow-wave- and arousal-like responses during NREM sleep - Communications Biology This study shows that emotionally charged sounds modulate the occurrence, shape, and downstream impact of K-complexes, revealing a flexible, multi-phase brain response during NREM sleep that may suppo...

🧠💤 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

Honors Program Do you want to go beyond the standard university experience and unlock your full potential? The Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca is opening up applications for the Honors Program, a course designed for tal...

📢 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...

The semantics of dreams Dreams are universal yet deeply personal experiences. While memory and personal concerns influence dream content, the impact of other individual, generalizable traits remains poorly understood. To add...

📄 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. 🌕

MBHT@IMT School PhD Program in Mind, Brain, and Human Thought (MBHT)

📢 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