%0 Journal Article
%T Microdream neurophenomenology
%A Tore Nielsen
%J Archive of "Neuroscience of Consciousness".
%D 2017
%R 10.1093/nc/nix001
%X Nightly transitions into sleep are usually uneventful and transpire in the blink of an eye. But in the laboratory these transitions afford a unique view of how experience is transformed from the perceptually grounded consciousness of wakefulness to the hallucinatory simulations of dreaming. The present review considers imagery in the sleep-onset transition¡ª¡°microdreams¡± in particular¡ªas an alternative object of study to dreaming as traditionally studied in the sleep lab. A focus on microdream phenomenology has thus far proven fruitful in preliminary efforts to (i) develop a classification for dreaming¡¯s core phenomenology (the ¡°oneiragogic spectrum¡±), (ii) establish a structure for assessing dreaming¡¯s multiple memory inputs (¡°multi-temporal memory sources¡±), (iii) further Silberer¡¯s project for classifying sleep-onset images in relation to waking cognition by revealing two new imagery types (¡°autosensory imagery,¡± ¡°exosensory imagery¡±), and (iv) embed a potential understanding of microdreaming processes in a larger explanatory framework (¡°multisensory integration approach¡±). Such efforts may help resolve outstanding questions about dream neurophysiology and dreaming¡¯s role in memory consolidation during sleep but may also advance discovery in the neuroscience of consciousness more broadly
%K sleep and dreaming
%K mind wandering
%K hypnagogia
%K sleep onset
%K binding and multisensory integration
%K imagery
%U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007184/