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Mem. 179:107398. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2021.107398 PubMed Abstract | Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar Keywords: human performance, transcranial electrical stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation, transcranial alternating current stimulation, military, peripheral nerve stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation Citation: van der Groen O, Rafique SA, Willmot N, Murphy MG, Tisnovsky E and Brunyé TT (2025) Transcutaneous and transcranial electrical stimulation for enhancing military performance: an update and systematic review. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 19:1501209. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1501209 Received: 24 September 2024; Accepted: 12 February 2025; Published: 03 March 2025. Edited by: Jorge Leite, Portucalense University, Portugal Reviewed by: Alexander Hunold, Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany Jiahua Xu, University of Tübingen, Germany *Correspondence: Tad T. Brunyé, Thaddeus.t.Brunye.civ@army.mil ----------- https://our.utah.edu/research-opportunity/spur-2026-enhancing-memory-consolidation-during-sleep-with-targeted-memory-reactivation/ SPUR 2026: Enhancing Memory Consolidation During Sleep with Targeted Memory Reactivation Go back to Database Faculty Mentor: Bradley King Title: Assistant Professor College: Health School / Department: Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation Email: bradley.ross.king@utah.edu Project description The human brain has a fascinating ability to form new memories. These new memories undergo consolidation, the process by which the newly acquired memories become more robust and are stored for the long-term. There is now consistent evidence that sleep plays a critical role in this consolidation process. Recent research has also shown that consolidation can be augmented by experimental interventions such as targeted memory reactivation (TMR) applied during post-learning sleep. In TMR protocols, sensory stimuli (e.g. sounds) that are associated to the learned material during the learning episode are presented during sleep to reactivate the encoded memory trace. This memory reinstatement is thought to be supported by the reactivation of the brain patterns associated with the learning episode. However, the neurophysiological processes supporting these effects have been scarcely studied. Therefore, the goal of the present study is to elucidate the neurophysiological processes supporting memory reactivation during sleep which underlie enhancement in memory consolidation. To do so, we will use sequence learning as a study model as it underlies several daily activities in both memory domains (e.g., memorizing vs. typing a phone number). We will analyze electrophysiological (EEG) data in real-time to reactivate memories during sleep (nap) and to reveal the neurophysiological processes supporting memory reactivation. In summary, this project will employ state-of-the-art electrophysiological and reactivation approaches to examine the following intriguing question with clinical, educational and fundamental implications: Can memories be reactivated during sleep to boost the consolidation processes? Student Role: It is our ambition to provide the students with a wide range of research-related activities. Our goal is not only to showcase what the life of a researcher looks like in the laboratory, but also to train the students to become researchers. We therefore believe that our students should be involved in all parts of the research project. Specifically, after being introduced to the relevant concepts related to the project (literature reading), students will be involved in the discussion for the development of the study design (behavioral and EEG design) as well as in the piloting of the newly developed design. After this initial phase, the students will be involved in the recruitment of study participants and the collection of both the behavioral and sleep (nap) EEG data associated to the project. Last, the students will be trained to perform behavioral and EEG analyses in order to present preliminary results related to their internship at the OUR summer symposium. We also would like our students to be fully part of the daily activities of the research team and will encourage them to attend our weekly lab meetings and journal reading discussions. Student Benefits: This undergraduate research opportunity will provide a student with extensive experience in human subjects research in the domain of neuroscience. Specifically, the student will: Receive training in research ethics and good clinical practices in human subjects research. Learn how to interact with scientific collaborators and research participants. Learn the foundations of scripting in software commonly used for data processing and statistical analyses (e.g., MATLAB). Learn basic principles of behavioral data analyses (performance speed and accuracy on memory tasks). Learn basic principles of sleep EEG approaches. Become familiar with procedures for the acquisition of sleep (nap) EEG data. Learn basic principles of EEG analytical approaches. Gain experience with project/results presentations and scientific writing. These outcomes and experiences offer an ideal mix of research domain-general skills (i.e., ethics, scripting, writing, presentation) and domain-specific skills (i.e., acquisition and analyses of behavioral and brain imaging data). This will ultimately provide the student with an excellent foundation to pursue graduate training and/or a career in science, and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. Project Duration: 10-weeks in summer 2026, May 18-July 31, 2026. Opportunity Type: Research Assistant Opportunity Location Type: In Person Is this a paid opportunity: Yes Paid Description: $5,000 stipend disbursed throughout the 10-week program. Minimum Requirements: Must be a degree-seeking, matriculated undergraduate student in the Fall 2025 semester (beginning or continuing college career in Fall 2025 and not graduating before December 2026; concurrent enrollment while in high school does not meet this eligibility requirement). Applicants do not need to be a University of Utah student (SPUR is nationally competitive - you may be a student from an institution across the country, including a community college). How To Apply: Visit this link for more information and to submit an application. Deadline to apply is January 25th, 2026 11:59PM (MT) ------------------- https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/restore-reengineering-enabling-sleep RESTORE: Reengineering Enabling Sleep Transitions in Operationally Restrictive Environments Summary The Reengineering Enabling Sleep Transitions in Operationally Restrictive Environments (RESTORE) program aims to demonstrate precision control of sleep macro- and micro-architectures to optimize cognitive performance following 3-hour sleep restriction commonly occurring in combat operations. Current civilian treatments are predicated on helping an individual with a sleep disorder achieve healthy, normative sleep by reducing time to sleep onset and awakenings during sleep and with a goal of achieving a fully restorative 7- to 8-hour night sleep. Service members’ responsibilities frequently result in less than 3 hours of sleep during combat and less than 6 hours during regular duty. RESTORE will test the potential for recent advancements in non-invasive neuromodulation technologies and understanding of the importance of sleep micro-architectures to increase sleep efficiency for maintenance of cognitive performance under sleep-restricted conditions commonly faced by warfighters. ------------- https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/targeted-dream-incubation-at-sleep-onset-increases-post-sleep-creative-performance/ leep onset increases post-sleep creative performance Research March 13, 2023 Topics #creativity #sleep People Adam Haar Horowitz Former Postdoctoral Associate Kathleen Esfahany Tomas Vega Galvez Former Research Assistant Pattie Maes Professor of Media Technology; Germeshausen Professor Projects Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams Targeted Dream Incubation Groups Share this publication Publication Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance Horowitz*, A.H., Esfahany*, K., Gálvez, T.V. et al. Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance. Sci Rep 13, 7319 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31361-w Abstract The link between dreams and creativity has been a topic of intense speculation. Recent scientific findings suggest that sleep onset (known as N1) may be an ideal brain state for creative ideation. However, the specific link between N1 dream content and creativity has remained unclear. To investigate the contribution of N1 dream content to creative performance, we administered targeted dream incubation (a protocol that presents auditory cues at sleep onset to introduce specific themes into dreams) and collected dream reports to measure incorporation of the selected theme into dream content. We then assessed creative performance using a set of three theme-related creativity tasks. Our findings show enhanced creative performance and greater semantic distance in task responses following a period of N1 sleep as compared to wake, corroborating recent work identifying N1 as a creative sweet spot and offering novel evidence for N1 enabling a cognitive state with greater associative divergence. We further demonstrate that successful N1 dream incubation enhances creative performance more than N1 sleep alone. To our knowledge, this is the first controlled experiment investigating a direct role of incubating dream content in the enhancement of creative performance. ----------- https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sleep/articles/10.3389/frsle.2024.1258345/full Targeted dream incubation at a distance: the development of a remote and sensor-free tool for incubating hypnagogic dreams and mind-wandering Lucas Bellaiche &#x;Lucas Bellaiche1*†Adam Haar Horowitz,,&#x;Adam Haar Horowitz2,3,4†Mason McClayMason McClay5Ryan BottaryRyan Bottary6Dan DenisDan Denis7Christina ChenChristina Chen2Pattie MaesPattie Maes2Paul SeliPaul Seli1 Hypnagogia—the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep—is marked by “hypnagogic dreams,” during which our brains tend to forge connections among concepts that are otherwise unrelated. This process of creating novel associations during hypnagogic dreams is said to contribute to enhancing creativity, learning, and memory. Recently, researchers have proposed that mind-wandering—a form of spontaneous thought that is freely moving and characterized by transitioning thought content—might be subserved by processes similar to those engaged during hypnagogia, and may serve similar creative functions. However, to date, the relationship between hypnagogia and mind-wandering remains poorly understood, which is likely due in part to the fact that research into hypnagogia requires time-consuming, cumbersome, and costly polysomnography. In light of this, the present study had two primary aims: first, to test a novel tool—called Dormio Light—for cueing and indexing hypnagogic dream content in a cost- and time-effective manner, with the ability for remote administration; second, to use this tool to examine any relations between hypnagogic dreams and mind-wandering (defined as “freely moving thought”). Participants (N = 80, with 34 females) completed a task in which our tool prompted them to engage in hypnagogia and, separately, mind-wandering, with instructions to think about a common everyday object (Tree or Fork) while experiencing these cognitive states. Following each state, participants reported thought content and completed phenomenological questionnaires. Providing an initial validation of our tool, we successfully cued hypnagogic and mind-wandering thought content that was specific to our cues (e.g., Tree), with our incubation-rate results comparable to those found in laboratory-based studies. Further, we found evidence for some phenomenological differences between hypnagogia and mind-wandering reports. Our study offers a novel, cost- and time-effective tool with which to remotely cue and index hypnagogia and mind-wandering, and sheds light on the relationship between hypnagogia and mind-wandering, thereby providing future directions for research into these two cognitive states. Introduction In recent years, there has been a surge of psychological research into different states of human consciousness. Here, we concentrate on two such manifestations of consciousness: hypnagogia and freely moving thought (a particular type of mind-wandering). Hypnagogia, also known as Stage N1, refers to the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep, where one may experience a diverse array of sensory phenomena, including auditory or visual hallucinations, lucid dreams (Mota-Rolim et al., 2015), or even a sense of falling or floating. Hypnagogia is characterized by spontaneous dreams—“hypnagogic dreams”—during which our brains tend to forge novel connections between otherwise semantically disparate concepts (Schacter, 1976; Ghibellini and Meier, 2023). On the other hand, freely moving thought (FMT; a type of mind-wandering) refers to a cognitive state, experienced during waking life, wherein people's thoughts make frequent transitions across semantically unrelated content (Mills et al., 2018). The present study had two primary aims: Firstly, to develop and validate an innovative tool that would allow for cuing and capturing thought content during hypnagogic and FMT states. Secondly, to identify and then compare and contrast the characteristics of thoughts individuals encounter within these two cognitive states. A new tool for cueing and capturing hypnagogic and mind-wandering thought content Recently, researchers have shown increasing interest in Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI), a technique that involves the presentation of auditory cues during hypnagogia to introduce specific themes into people's hypnagogic dreams (Haar Horowitz et al., 2020). Much of the interest in TDI has stemmed from the potential of this technique to be utilized to enhance creative problem-solving and learning. Indeed, it has been speculated that by guiding the dreaming mind toward particular content, researchers might be able to facilitate the forging of novel connections between otherwise disparate concepts—a process critical to creativity (Haar Horowitz et al., 2023; see also Lacaux et al., 2021). To provide a foundation for research on TDI in hypnagogia, Haar Horowitz et al. (2020) developed a novel TDI tool, Dormio, which is a wearable electronic glove that indexes heart rate, muscle flexion, and electrodermal activity to identify the onset of hypnagogia. Once a hypnagogic state is identified, Dormio can then be utilized to deliver auditory cues which influence dream content and later can prompt and record dream reports. Utilizing this tool, Haar Horowitz et al. (2023) recently found that TDI used to incubate dreams on a specific topic can significantly increase post-sleep creativity on tasks related to that topic. However, while it has been established that Dormio is effective in cueing and indexing hypnagogic dream content (Haar Horowitz et al., 2020, 2023), research implementing Dormio can be difficult to conduct. Indeed, the Dormio glove is custom-made and few devices exist; these sensitive devices can break, and at-home studies can suffer from delays. Moreover, collecting a large-data sample is limited by the production of hardware and lack of large-scale manufacturing of dream incubation devices. Given the resource-demanding nature of using Dormio hardware, here, we sought to develop a modified version of Dormio that is software-based only (which we refer henceforth as “Dormio Light”) and would (a) remove the need for time-consuming, in-person procedures, (b) eliminate the requirement for hardware used to identify the onset of hypnagogia, (c) allow for remote cueing and indexing of hypnagogic dream content (e.g., via online data-collection platforms such as Prolific and Mechanical Turk), and (d) permit expedited data collection. To this end, we created Dormio Light, an online platform that induces specific dream content via TDI on a laptop's web browser. TDI incubates dream content using timed prompts that remind participants of their dream cue and prompt dream reports at appropriate times in the sleep cycle (see Methods). Crucially, because Dormio Light does not require hardware outside of a personal computer, this online platform permits researchers to use crowdsourcing websites to—for the first time in dream research to our knowledge—achieve large and same-day data collection. Given the methodological barriers (see Escourrou et al., 2000; Burgdorf et al., 2018; Topalidis et al., 2023) that constrain dream studies to small sample sizes (e.g., 50 participants in Haar Horowitz et al., 2023), such a development in remote dream research could provide important future research opportunities. While the primary motivation behind the creation of Dormio Light was to streamline research into hypnagogia, it is important to consider the potential utility of this tool in cueing and subsequently incubating mind-wandering, specifically FMT. To our knowledge, the cueing of FMT has not yet been the subject of empirical investigation. Nonetheless, such cueing is of potential importance for a few reasons. Firstly, akin to research on targeted dream incubation, the cueing of FMT could unveil critical insights into the processes underlying FMT phenomenology, including its onset and flow. Indeed, one drawback of typical mind-wandering research, including that which uses experience-sampling methodologies, is the lack of identification of the “ignition point,” as raised by Smallwood (2013). In other words, “it is difficult to separate those processes that acted as the imperative event from the processes that are concerned with how those thoughts are sustained” (p. 521, 522). With a cueing procedure, as in the present study, this concern is largely eliminated by providing standardized “ignition points.” Additionally, Dormio Light could be deployed to minimally guide the content explored during FMT, potentially serving as a mechanism to foster creativity and problem-solving skills during these wakeful states. Phenomenological comparisons across hypnagogia and mind-wandering Beyond developing a novel tool for guiding and capturing thoughts occurring during hypnagogia and periods of FMT, we were interested in examining the possible similarities and differences in thought content produced during these two states. On the one hand, there is reason to suspect some overlap in the content of thought across hypnagogia and FMT. Indeed, both states are characterized by cognitions that are relatively unconstrained and highly fluid (Perogamvros et al., 2017; Mills et al., 2018; Quercia et al., 2018; Andrillon et al., 2019), and it is therefore plausible that the thoughts engaged during these two states will have some commonalities. Moreover, recent research has found that both states are associated with enhanced creativity (Lacaux et al., 2021; Irving et al., 2022; Haar Horowitz et al., 2023)—presumably because the lack of constraint that is characteristic of these states allows for novel links to be drawn between different concepts—suggesting the possibility that there are similarities in thought content produced during each state. On the other hand, these two states are associated with distinct cognitive processes and experiences that should be expected to produce some differences in terms of thought content. Perhaps the most obvious difference in this respect is that, whereas hypnagogia occurs during a transitional period between wakefulness and sleep, FMT occur exclusively during wakefulness, when one's awareness of one's thoughts is presumably greater than during hypnagogia. Moreover, whereas hypnagogia often includes more dream-like or hallucinatory experiences (Schacter, 1976; Ghibellini and Meier, 2023), FMT do not appear to have such phenomenological characteristics. Importantly, these two states likely exist on a continuum of cognitive control (as implied by the continuity hypothesis of dreaming; Schredl and Hofmann, 2003; see Sodré et al., 2023), with hypnagogia representing a state of reduced control and increased immersion in internally generated experiences, and FMT reflecting a state of reduced, but still present, control over thought content. However, to date, no research has directly compared the thought phenomenology across these two states. Thus, here, to shed light on the similarities and differences between thought content produced during hypnagogia and FMT, we indexed the characteristics of thoughts reported while participants experienced hypnagogia and, separately, FMT, via a thought-report questionnaire adopted from Smallwood et al. (2016) and Gross et al. (2020) that indexes several features of thought content and structure (e.g., Emotionality, Novelty, Topical Shifting, Meaningfulness). Given the exploratory nature of these comparisons, we do not report any specific hypotheses. The current study Here, we used Dormio Light to provide timed prompts via the Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) method to cue specific thought content for both hypnagogic dream states and FMT. Methodologically, we sought to validate our novel remote method by assessing incorporation rates of cued items (i.e., how many thought reports referenced the cued item) and compare them to similar in-person studies that utilized the Dormio glove (e.g., Haar Horowitz et al., 2020, 2023). In addition, we compared thought content—indexed via typed thought reports and responses to a thought-content questionnaire—to assess potential differences and similarities in thought profile across periods of hypnagogia and FMT. Methods The following study was approved by Duke University Campus Institutional Review Board (2021–0422). Participants Participants were recruited through Prolific, an online crowdsourcing platform that offers paid research studies to users worldwide. Eligibility criteria required participants to be at least 18 years old, fluent in English, residents of the United States, and have a minimum 90% approval rating from previous studies on Prolific. Additionally, participants needed to have completed at least 50 Prolific studies previously. For compatibility with the study's website, participants were also required to use Google Chrome as their web browser. In total, we recruited 132 participants who met the Prolific requirements listed above. Given the exploratory nature of the study, we did not conduct any a priori power analyses, but we did aim to surpass sample sizes from previous cued-mind-wandering paradigms (e.g., McVay and Kane, 2013, reported between 57 and 67 participants in each of their experiments) and cued-hypnagogia studies (Haar Horowitz et al., 2020, 2023: 50 participants). However, given the novel remote methodology, we wanted to ensure that we analyzed data only from people who followed instructions completely and for whom the hypnagogic and FMT cueing worked effectively. Accordingly, we employed strict analysis inclusion criteria such that participants had to self-report (a) having stayed completely awake without any intervening sleep during the FMT task—which may be more common than expected, as reported in Tagliazucchi and Laufs (2014) and Andrillon et al. (2019)—and (b) having experienced some level of sleep (“fully” or “halfway”) during the hypnagogia task. Excluding data from participants who did not meet both of these stringent criteria, we report results from analyses examining data from 80 participants (Mage = 36.01, SDage = 12.42; female = 34), which is above the target sample size and relatively high in power given the within-subjects design. We compensated participants $24.00 for an average experiment length of 2.6 hours. Dormio Light website We guided participants to a website entitled “Dormio Light” for thought incubation, awakenings, and verbal reports. For interested readers, the Dormio Light website can be found at: https://christinatchen.github.io/dormio/timer.html. Participants completed both conditions (hypnagogic dreaming, FMT) separately in a randomized order via this website. Written instructions and pre-recorded video instructions in the Qualtrics survey prompted participants to enter, in the Dormio Light website, their Prolific ID, the object about which they were instructed to dream/mind-wander (randomly assigned by Qualtrics as either Fork or Tree), and to record audio messages in their own voices that the website would replay throughout the assigned condition. The self-recorded audio messages were (1) an incubation message (“Remember to think of a Fork/Tree”) intermittently played throughout the condition, and (2) a report message (“Tell me what is going through your mind”) that played four times across the condition prompting a verbal report of the participant's current thoughts. Research has indicated audio played during sleep in one's own voice can effectively incubate dream content (Castaldo and Holzman, 1967). Thus, here, we chose to test our tool using participants' own voices in order to make our tool as flexible as possible for at-home experimental use in the future. Additionally, we instructed participants to enter, in the Dormio Light website, a latency window of time to begin the condition (i.e., preparatory time to fall asleep into hypnagogia or to engage in FMT), after which the website would pick a random time within this window estimate. For instance, in the hypnagogia condition, a participant could enter that it typically takes him/her 10 to 15 min to fall asleep, and the Dormio Light website would present the incubation message after 13 min. This preparatory window of time was freely chosen by the participant given the individual variability that can exist regarding latency to sleep (Carskadon and Dement, 1982). The remainder of the settings were the same for all participants: to stay in hypnagogia/FMT for 3 min, record 4 rounds (i.e., trials) of entry into hypnagogia/FMT and report of thoughts, take 60 s to provide verbal reports as cued by their audio messages, and take 7 min to fall back into sleep/remain in a stable hypnagogia/FMT state following each awakening (see Figure 1). We chose these parameters for several reasons. First, though individual differences exist in sleep behavior, research suggests that hypnagogic dreaming is achieved rather rapidly after sleep onset. In addition, we believed that staying 3 min in each state provided adequate time for descriptive stories without a loss of memory during each of the 4 reports, which can occur if individuals enter N2 (Carr and Solomonova, 2019). Lastly, a short verbal report period allows for capture of cognitive content while mitigating the difficulty in falling back asleep which an increase in arousal during a longer period of awake report might create (Horner et al., 1997). ------- Supplementary material The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsle.2024.1258345/full#supplementary-material Footnotes 1. ^Some participants used the free-response prompt to also report things unrelated to the content of their thoughts in the condition, including questions about the study, Prolific-specific procedures, bugs they encountered, etc. These mentions were cleaned out. 2. ^Note that the EFA procedure demands continuous variables due to the initial computation of assessing shared variance via correlation; hence the exclusion of items 12 and 13. 3. ^Parallel analyses create simulated data based on the structure and range of the actual data (Horn, 1965). Eigenvalues from this simulated data are compared to those of the actual data and are compared across the range of possible factors. We then retain the number of factors where observed eigenvalues are greater than the simulated eigenvalues, as typically visualized by a scree plot (Sakaluk and Short, 2017); this step provides the number of factors that the observed data best discretize onto. See Supplementary Figures 1, 2. 4. ^These factor analyses–which mirror work by Ruby et al. (2013) and Smallwood et al. (2016) in reference to the FMT loadings of Affect and of Thought Structure, respectively– can motivate new research by inspiring new scales to test such latent factors (as recommended by Ghibellini and Meier, 2023). 5. ^We thank a reviewer for this comment. References Andrillon, T., Windt, J., Silk, T., Drummond, S. P. A., Bellgrove, M. A., and Tsuchiya, N. (2019). Does the mind wander when the brain takes a break? Local sleep in wakefulness, attentional lapses and mind-wandering. 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Biol. 20, 850–855. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.03.027 PubMed Abstract | Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar Keywords: hypnagogia, hypnagogic dreams, mind-wandering, freely moving thought, dream incubation Citation: Bellaiche L, Haar Horowitz A, McClay M, Bottary R, Denis D, Chen C, Maes P and Seli P (2024) Targeted dream incubation at a distance: the development of a remote and sensor-free tool for incubating hypnagogic dreams and mind-wandering. Front. Sleep 3:1258345. doi: 10.3389/frsle.2024.1258345 Received: 13 July 2023; Accepted: 13 May 2024; Published: 28 May 2024. Edited by: Stuart F. Quan, Harvard Medical School, United States Reviewed by: Sérgio Arthuro Mota-Rolim, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil Carlos Schenck, University of Minnesota, United States Copyright © 2024 Bellaiche, Haar Horowitz, McClay, Bottary, Denis, Chen, Maes and Seli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. *Correspondence: Lucas Bellaiche, lucas.bellaiche@duke.edu ---------- uture work Given the relatively successful implementation of Dormio Light, future research can investigate the experience of, and mechanisms behind, hypnagogia more in-depth. Moreover, the same could be done for research on FMT, which, before this study, lacked a tool with which to effectively cue and capture such thought content. This novel resource, given its experimental ability to control thought content and ignition, can help open a window into the differential (or similar) mechanisms that underly mnemonic and creative effects of these forms of spontaneous thinking. Though the early mind-wandering literature focused on detrimental effects of inattention on cognitive performance and mood (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010; Reichle et al., 2010), the newer literature has since emphasized the possible benefits of inattentive mind-wandering including creativity, future-planning, and memory consolidation (Baird et al., 2012; Seli et al., 2018; Dobson and Christoff, 2020). Hypnagogia (and dreaming in general) also shows effects of memory and learning consolidation (Wamsley, 2014; Antrobus and Wamsley, 2017; Barrett, 2017), including across linguistic tasks (De Koninck et al., 1990) and motor coordination tasks (Wamsley et al., 2010; Fogel et al., 2018; Wamsley and Stickgold, 2019). To understand the differential roles of memory systems across forms of spontaneous thoughts like FMT and hypnagogia, Dormio Light lends itself well to memory experiments. For instance, research could present to-be-remembered words during both hypnagogia and FMT as permitted in the audio recordings of the website, and subsequently compare later recollection. The fascinating role of memory and learning in spontaneous thought like mind-wandering and hypnagogia further extend to cognitive processes of creativity and creative problem-solving. Mind-wandering has been investigated as a source of creative incubation and inspiration. For instance, Irving et al. (2022) showed boosted creativity during FMT, the form of mind-wandering investigated in this study, by showing participants a moderately engaging movie clip, during which creative incubation was predicted to occur. Thus, future research could implement Dormio Light to specifically investigate how cue content influences FMT dynamics, thought constraint, and resultant creativity and problem-solving. Meanwhile, hypnagogia has also been shown to afford unique insight in creative problem-solving tasks. In a recent study on mathematical processing during hypnagogia by Lacaux et al. (2021), participants were given equations to solve, but the problems actually had a hidden rule that would immediately provide the answer. Remarkably, 83% of participants who spent at least 15 s in hypnagogia discovered the hidden rule, compared to 30% of those in wakeful mind-wandering and 14% in N2. With Dormio Light, similar research may be carried out remotely across other creative and problem-solving domains at a larger scale. Our use of multiple statistical techniques that converged on general findings also provides possibilities for forays into both additional self-report questionnaires and more automated assessment of dream and FMT content. Regarding the former, given the exploratory thought-probe battery utilized here (though initially adapted from Smallwood et al., 2016 and Gross et al., 2020), our EFA results point toward a more data-driven and targeted comparison of states with fewer items. Future work would thus do well to investigate the latent factors suggested by our data and the factor analyses. Regarding the latter, given the success of the USE text-embedding model, a promising direction for future research is to test differences in the semantic structure across dreaming and other types of mental content. Contemporary language embedding models, such as USE, may be further leveraged to derive differences in dream content for more selective semantic representations, such as similarity to peripheral features (e.g., food rather than fork; the smell of a forest rather than a tree). Furthermore, future research could probe other linguistic relationships, such as causal language, which may be more abstractly represented in dream content. Given that recent research has shown that trait creativity is related to an ability to generate semantically divergent linguistic content (Beaty and Johnson, 2021; Olson et al., 2021), future work might also explore how measures of semantic stability in dream content, such as temporal coherence, might also be related to trait creativity. -------------- https://ftsg.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/FTSG_2025_TR_FINAL_LINKED.pdf -------- https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/13636 https://web.archive.org/web/20251104075623/https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/13636 The cult of Rajavi Brainwashing as a tool in the MEK cult November 24, 2021 Processes of brainwashing rest on the creation of stress or threat with no escape other than the apparent unsafe haven of the group. This is exactly the atmosphere ruling the MKO members in the group camps formerly in Iraq and in France and Albania now. Self-criticism meetings, permanent supervising of a hierarchical system, mandatory working schedule, sleep deprivation, forced celibacy are all tools to maintain the stressful, threatening structure. This results in a state of terror that causes a dissociative state resulting from a disorganized bond to the leader, or the group as proxy. This way, members are gradually driven to engage in acts they would not have done before their involvement in the totalist system of the cult. For examples, acts of terror, suicide and self-immolation committed by the MKO operatives are numerous in the official history of the group published by different sources including the US State Department, The Human Rights Watch and the RAND Corporation etc. https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/14808 MEK leaders use sleep deprivation as a mind control technique February 28, 2023 Sleep deprivation There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is classified as a form of torture and is a common technique employed by destructive cults. They force members to stay awake for extended periods to reduce their subjects’ decision-making ability and make them more open to persuasion. Leaders of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) use this technique to persuade the rank and file to stay inside the suppressive atmosphere of the group. Sleep deprivation and fatigue create disorientation and vulnerability by prolonging mental and physical activity and withholding adequate rest and sleep. Former members of the MEK testify about this form of torture that has been used by the group commanders for over four decades. Sleep deprivation sleep deprivation is classified as a form of torture and is a common technique employed by destructive cults Dr. Massoud Banisadr, former member of the MEK courageously published his autobiography in 2004. The book titled “Destructive and Terrorist Cults, a New Kind of Slavery”, is an inspiring account of his idealistically entry into the MEK, his rise to a high-ranking member of the group, his subjection to brainwashing and his subsequent defection from the group and difficult return to normal life. According to Dr. Banisadr, sleep deprivation is a tactic that is used in the MEK to interfere with brain functions. He notifies that cult members sleep in public dorms where a large number of people sleep by the side of each other. The places are usually noisy and crowded. Members’ rights to have a private room are not respected. “Members are much more deprived of sleep than what the leaders expect,” he writes. Based on his scientific studies, “a person with insomnia, is slow in getting conscious about his or her own psychological conditions. His ability of decision making and acting reduces.” Dr. Banisadr clarifies that sleeping gives the brain the opportunity to organize the information it has got through the day and eventually it provides the brain with the ability to analyze and interpret daily issues. Based on his account, members of the MEK are always deprived from enough sleep. --- web