Dreaming after trauma

This project aims to assess how traumatic negative events affect subsequent dreaming, utilizing the Threat Simulation Theory (TST, Revonsuo, 2000) as the theoretical background.

The TST is an evolutionary psychological theory of dream function, stating that dreaming has a biological function. This PhD thesis project focuses on the investigation of the threat simulation theory, and specifically on how natural and human-induced catastrophes affect subsequent dreaming.

It builds upon dream reports collected from people exposed to three different large-scale catastrophic events that affected thousands of people: Polish survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp, British prisoners of war (WWII), and the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia 2004.

We test the TST by analyzing the prevalence and nature of threatening events in the dream reports of people exposed to either human-induced (WWII) or natural catastrophes (tsunami), with a content analysis scale for identifying and categorizing threatening events (Dream Threat Scale) that has been previously validated.

We further conduct thematic analysis of dreams as well as address emotions in dreams.

Reveal brain processing of negative memories

The results shed light on how the brain processes negative emotional memories in dreams after exposure to life-threatening events, and although we will directly test TST, the results have implications on other dream function theories, mainly the emotional memory consolidation theories.

In addition to researchers from the University of Skövde, Henri Olkoniemi (University of Oulu), Jarno Tuominen (University of Turku), and Wojciech Owczarski (University of Gdańsk) are also participating.