Lucid dream startup says people can work in their sleep
Prophetic’s Halo headband claims to induce lucid dreaming through non-invasive neurostimulation—letting wearers become aware in dreams and even use that dream-state for creative problem solving (The Independent, 2023).
2020 Dreams. Toward a New Understanding of the Dreaming-Waking Continuum
The year 2020 emerged as a pivotal moment in modern history, in many overlapping and mutually reinforced ways. This interactive digital project illuminates the dramatic and epochal events of that year as witnessed from the vantage of collective dreaming (Stanford University Press, 2023).
The Nightmare of Dream Advertising
This article examines the rise of ‘targeted dream incubation,’ where advertisers use sensory cues to insert commercial messages into people’s dreams—a practice 77% of surveyed companies plan to test by 2025. While researchers see therapeutic promise in dream incubation, its use for branding raises concerns over privacy, manipulation, and even potential violations of existing subliminal advertising laws (William & Mary Law Review, 2023).
Climate Change Dreams
A growing number of people are dreaming explicitly about climate change, reflecting both collective anxiety and emerging hope about environmental collapse. Surveys and dream reports show generational and demographic differences—young people, men, and people of color dream about climate change most often (Time, 2023).
Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance
Scientists found that introducing a specific theme right as people fall asleep during the N1 sleep stage—what’s called targeted dream incubation—was shown to boost creativity in tasks related to the incubated theme. Compared to staying awake or dreaming without prompts, participants whose dreaming included those prompts performed better and made more novel, far-reaching associations (Scientific Reports, 2023).
Dreaming together: Artists mobilizing collective dreaming methods for the radical imagination
Dreams are framed as social experiences that, when shared, become tools for imagining alternatives to racial capitalism, gentrification, and settler colonialism. Artists who draw on collective dreaming practices use them to expand the radical imagination and to cultivate spaces of solidarity and resistance (Max Haiven, 2022).
Are advertisers going to infiltrate our dreams?
Makers of beers, video games, and fast food are experimenting with “targeted dream incubation,” trying to plant brand cues (sounds, visuals, scents) just as people drift off to sleep to influence what they dream. Though some scientists warn this approach could threaten privacy and mental autonomy, researchers say we’re not yet at the point where dream ads are widely effective or tightly controlled (The Hustle, 2022).
Dreams are a precious resource. Don’t let advertisers hack them.
New marketing techniques are emerging that use targeted stimuli before or during sleep to influence what we dream—and what we want when we wake. While these dream-engineering tools hold promise for healing, creativity, and personal growth, advertisers are eager to exploit them for commercial gain, raising serious ethical concerns about privacy and consent (Aeon, 2021)
Dream sharing and the enhancement of empathy: Theoretical and applied implication
Talking about someone’s dream using a structured discussion format leads people to feel more empathy for the dreamer—especially those who start off with lower levels of empathy. The increase doesn’t depend on how long the dreams or discussions are, and it seems sharing dreams has social benefits beyond their private emotional or memory-processing roles (Dreaming, 2021).
Pandemic Dreams
Pandemic Dreams draws on Dr. Barrett's survey of 9,000 dreams about the COVID-19 crisis. It describes how dreaming has reflected each aspect of the pandemic: fear of catching the virus, reactions to sheltering at home, work changes, homeschooling, and an individual's increased isolation or crowding (Oneiroi Press, 2020).
It’s in Dreams That Americans Are Making Sense of Trump
Thousands of dreams featuring Donald Trump reveal how Americans are processing fear, absurdity, and division through surreal night-time imagery. These dreams show less about Trump himself than about the nation’s attempt to make sense of a chaotic political reality (The New Yorker, 2020).
Dreaming under fire: the psyche in times of continuous stress
Continuous stress and trauma are manifested in dreams, the study of which expands our knowledge concerning the unconscious reactions to the trauma and the efforts of coping with continuous traumatic situations. Since September 2000, the area of the Gaza envelope in Israel has been under the threat of rocket attacks. Such continuous life-threatening stimuli can be considered complex trauma. In this research, people living near the Gaza Strip were asked to write their dreams and their associations to the dreams during 4 consecutive weeks. Six hundred and nine dreams were collected from 44 women and 18 men (age range 14–62). In another research dreams of Palestinians and Israelis were collected immediately after the last Gaza wars. Differences in dream themes between gender and age groups were found, conveying the depth of psychological experience of living and dreaming under fire.
How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism
This essay revisits Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, a clandestine archive of 300 dreams gathered in 1930s Berlin that reveal how authoritarianism penetrated the unconscious. By treating dreams as a collective diary of fear, complicity, and occasional resistance, the article argues that Beradt’s work remains a vital, overlooked lens on the psychic life of totalitarian rule (The New Yorker, 2019).
Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep & Dreams During the Civil War
The book explores how Americans—soldiers, civilians, enslaved and free—lived not only amid the open horrors of the Civil War but also in the private realms of sleeplessness, dreams, and fears. It shows that dreams served many roles: they echoed anxieties, prophesied death, offered escape, maintained bonds across distance, and helped people make sense of war’s disruption (The University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
Dreams and the Organization
This special issue explores the intersection of psychoanalysis, dreams, and organizational studies, highlighting how unconscious processes shape management, leadership, and organizational identity (Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2013).
Creativity, Organizational Knowledge, and the Power of Dreams
The study shows that project managers whose dreams are emotionally vivid tend to lead projects rated as more creative—especially when they’re motivated by internal satisfaction rather than external pressure. It also finds that leadership styles that emphasize belonging, support and decentralized decision-making (like clan or team styles) amplify this effect, while rigid hierarchical styles tend to suppress the creativity-dream link (Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2013).