Why do some dreams feel so vivid that they seem real, while others unfold in disorganized fragments that are difficult to remember or understand? New research suggests the answer may depend on a combination of personality, sleep quality, mental habits, and big events happening in the outside world.
A study led by researchers at the IMT School of Advanced Studies in Lucca found that dreams are more than just random collections of images and thoughts. Rather, they appear to be shaped by both individual differences and common experiences, including major social disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thousands of dream reports reveal hidden patterns
This study communication psychologyexamined more than 3,700 descriptions of dream and waking experiences from 287 people aged 18 to 70.
Participants recorded their dreams and daily experiences over a two-week period. The researchers also collected information about each person’s sleep habits, personality, cognitive abilities, and psychological characteristics.
This extensive set of information allowed the team to compare what people experienced during their waking hours with the stories, settings, and emotions that appeared in their dreams.
How AI helped scientists achieve their dream research
To analyze these large volumes of reports, the researchers used natural language processing (NLP), a type of artificial intelligence that examines patterns, relationships, and meaning in language.
Rather than relying solely on researchers to read and interpret every dream individually, the technology enabled the team to measure the semantic structure of the reports. Semantic structure refers to how ideas, words, and concepts are connected within a language.
The results showed that the content of dreams is neither completely random nor chaotic in nature. Rather, dreams reflected a complex mix of individual characteristics, including a tendency to wander, interest in dreams, and quality of sleep. Events happening in the wider world also influenced what people dreamed of.
Dreams aren’t just reenactments of the day
When the researchers compared participants’ descriptions of their waking lives with their dream reports, they found that the brain did not appear to replay everyday experiences exactly as they happened.
Instead, familiar details have changed.
A workplace, hospital, classroom, or other everyday environment may appear in a dream, but it is often combined with an unrelated location, a shift in perspective, or an unfamiliar environment. Different parts of a person’s life can merge into a single vivid scene.
These findings suggest that dreams are not a simple reproduction system. The sleeping mind seems to reassemble fragments of reality, combining memories with imagination, expectations, and possible future experiences.
The result can be entirely new scenarios that feel immersive, emotionally intense, and surreal.
Personality can affect the vividness of dreams
The way dreams transform also differs from person to person.
People who were more likely to let their minds wander during waking hours were more likely to report that their dreams changed quickly and felt more fragmented. Their dreams often moved quickly between scenes, ideas, or perspectives.
In contrast, participants who valued dreams more and believed that they had personal meaning tended to describe richer and more immersive experiences. Their dream reports contained stronger perceptual details, making the scenes feel more vivid and real.
The results of this study do not necessarily show that believing in dreams directly causes more vivid dreams. However, they reveal that there is a strong relationship between how people think about dreams and how they experience or remember dreams.
The pandemic left a mark on dreams
The researchers also examined dream reports collected by scientists at Sapienza University of Rome during the coronavirus lockdown. They compared those reports to data collected by the IMT School team over subsequent months and years.
During lockdown, dreams included stronger emotions and more references to restrictions, barriers, confinement, and other restrictions. These themes reflect situations that people experience in their daily lives.
As the months passed, those patterns became less noticeable. This gradual change suggests that dreams may evolve with psychological adjustments, especially as people adapt to stressful or disruptive events.
In other words, dreams can provide clues about how the mind responds to major changes over time.
“Our findings show that dreams are not just a reflection of past experiences, but are dynamic processes shaped by who we are and what we have been through,” explains Valentina Else, a researcher at the IMT School and lead author of the paper. “By combining large-scale data and computational techniques, we were able to uncover patterns in dream content that were previously difficult to detect.”
New tools to study the sleeping mind
This study also shows how artificial intelligence could change the study of dreams.
The NLP model was able to identify meaning and structure in dream reports with similar accuracy to independent human raters. This suggests that computational tools may allow scientists to analyze much larger collections of dreams in a consistent and reproducible way.
It could create new opportunities to study consciousness, memory, emotional processing, and mental health.
Dreams have traditionally been difficult to study on a large scale because they are deeply personal and often difficult to explain. AI-based language analysis can help researchers discover patterns that would otherwise remain hidden.
This research was supported by a grant from the BIAL Foundation (#091/2020) and a TweakDreams ERC starting grant (#948891). The study was carried out at the IMT Lucca School of Advanced Studies in collaboration with researchers from Rome’s Sapienza and Camerino Universities.
