Abstract
White dreaming is a term used in dream research to describe the feeling upon awakening that one had a dream but cannot remember its content. This feeling is said to be about a “white” dream, or a dream with content we are unable to access. The predominant view on dream research is that white dreams are forgotten dreams; one did indeed have a dream which now one cannot remember (Cohen, 1972; Lewis et al., 1966). This view finds support from experimental studies finding similar physiological markers between white dreaming and reports of contentful dreams (Siclari et al., 2013, 2017). However, alternative proposals suggest that white dream may represent sleep experiences with different types of conscious content, such as low-quality or reduced content (Fazekas et al., 2018), or very minimal content (see Windt et al., 2016). Given these different proposals, we might think that white dreaming describes a spectrum of experiences (see Windt, 2021). In this paper, I accept the view of white dreaming as a heterogeneous construct that refers to different sleep experiences. Additionally, I propose an alternative explanation to explain white dreaming. It might be that some are not about any sleep experience at all, but just memory illusions. To that aim, I compare white dreaming to other similar waking experiences including feelings of knowing, feelings of familiarity, and mind blanking.
How to attend
This is a read-ahead seminar. The meetings have a hybrid format. We meet in person in GM 652 and digitally on Zoom (Zoom login required).
The meeting link, along with a copy of the paper to be discussed, will be made available in advance via the mailing list.