Pink Watercolor Cloud

Summer School

NEUROSCIENCE OF DREAMING

Intro: Sleep/Dream basics

09:00

09:15

09:30

09:45

10:00

10:15

10:30

10:45

11:00

11:15

11:30

11:45

12:00

12:15

12:30

12:45

13:00

13:15

13:30

13:45

14:00

14:15

14:30

14:45

15:00

15:15

15:30

15:45

16:00

16:15

16:30

16:45

17:00

17:15

17:30

17:45

18:00

18:15

18:30

18:45

19:00

19:15

19:30

Registration + coffee

(9:00 - 9:30)

Seminars

(9:30 - 12:00)

Lunch

(12:00 - 13:00)

Seminars

(13:00 - 15:15)

Coffee Break

(15:15-15:45)

Parallel workshops

(15:45-17:45)

Welcome reception / poster session

(17:45-19:30)

Neural correlates and functions of dreaming

Poster session + coffee

(9:00 - 10:30)

Seminars

(10:30 - 12:;45)

Lunch

(12:45 - 13:45)

Seminars

(13:45 - 16:00)

Coffee Break

(16:00-16:30)

Parallel workshops

(16:30 - 17:20)

Parallel workshops

(17:30 - 18:20)

Plek bar/restaurant

(18:45)

Abnormal dreaming

Seminars

(9:00 - 10:30)

Coffee Break

(10:30 - 11:00)

Seminars

(11:00 - 12:30)

Lunch

(12:30 - 13:30)

Seminars

(13:30 - 15:45)

Coffee Break

(15:45 - 16:15)

Parallel workshops

(16:15-17:05)

Parallel workshops

(17:15-18:05)

Lucid dreaming

Dream engineering

Seminars

(9:00 - 10:00)

Coffee Break

(10:00 - 10:30)

Seminars

(10:30 - 12:00)

Lunch

(12:00 - 13:00)

Seminars

(13:00 - 15:15)

Social Event

(15:15 - 17:15)

Project idea market + coffee

(9:00 - 10:30)

Seminar + Parallel

Collaboration Projects

(10:30-11:15)

Seminar + Parallel

Collaboration Projects

(11:30-12:15)

Lunch

(12:30 - 13:30)

Seminar + Parallel

Collaboration Projects

(13:30 - 14:15)

Seminar

(14:30 - 15:15)

Coffee Break

(15:15 - 15:30)

Conclusion

(15:30 - 16:30)

Closure

(16:30)

Evening lecture & drinks

(17:30 - 19:30)

PROGRAM

Monday June 3rd

Sleep/Dream basics

09:00 - 09:30

Registration + coffee

Morning programme - Chaired by Henry Hebron

09:30 - 10:30

Welcome and Introduction - M. Dresler & F. Siclari

10:30 - 11:15

Perceiving Dreams: Intro to Psychology and Phenomenology of Dreaming - K. Lüth

11:15 - 12:00

Cognition at the borderland between wakefulness and sleep - C. Lacaux

12:00 - 13:00

Lunch

Afternoon programme - Chaired by Francesca Siclari

13:00 - 13:45

Night-dreaming and day-dreaming: spontaneous thoughts and experiences across the sleep-wake cycle - T. Andrillon

13:45 - 14:30

The wandering mind in sleep and wakefulness - P. Simor

14:30 - 15:15

Anesthesia, sleep and disconnected consciousness - K. Valli

15:15 - 15:45

Coffee Break

15:45 - 17:45

Parallel workshops

Workshop 1: Instruction room 2.258

Introduction to Sleep Scoring

L. Bovy

Workshop 2: Red room

Analyzing and Interpreting Changes in EEG Activity During Sleep and Dreams G. Bernardi

17:45 - 19:30

Welcome reception / poster session

Tuesday June 4th

Neural correlates and functions of dreaming

Poster session + coffee

09:00 - 10:30

Morning programme - Chaired by Martin Dresler

The EEG correlates of conscious experiences in sleep - F. Siclari

10:30 - 11:15

Neuroimaging roadmaps to dreaming - M. Pereira

11:15 - 12:00

Cerebral correlates of high vs low dream recall frequency - P. Ruby

12:00 - 12:45

Lunch

12:45 - 13:45

Afternoon programme - Chaired by Cathrin Canto

Dreaming and Memory Consolidation - S. Schoch

13:45 - 14:30

Form follows function: How should we approach the function of dreaming? - K. Valli

14:30 - 15:15

Sleep beyond memory replay: how creativity and sleep-dream-reality discrimination emerge - W. Senn

15:15 - 16:00

16:00 - 16:30

Coffee Break

Parallel workshops

16:30 - 17:20

Workshop 1: Cajal room 2.293

Do animals dream? - C. Canto

Workshop 2: Red room

Dream reporting - E. Demšar

17:30 - 18:20

Parallel workshops

Workshop 3: Instruction Room 2.258

Advanced aperiodic EEG - Yevgenia Rosenblum/Henry Hebron (Group 1)

Workshop 1: Instruction room 2.258

Advanced aperiodic EEG -

Y. Rosenblum/H. Hebron (Group 2)

Workshop 2: Red room

Using Micro-phenomenology in Investigating Dream Experience - E. Demšar

18:45

Morning programme - Chaired by Eus van Someren and Francesca Siclari

Wednesday June 5th

09:00 - 09:45

Abnormal Dreaming

REM behavior disorder, a window into dreams - J.-B. Maranci

09:45 - 10:30

Sleepwalking and related Non-REM sleep parasomnias - F. Siclari (not online)

10:30 - 11:00

Coffee Break

11:00 - 11:45

Narcolepsy as a window to dream experiences - Gert Jan Lammers

11:45 - 12:30

Awake or asleep? Nocturnal mentation in insomnia disorder - E. Van Someren

12:30 - 13:30

Lunch

Afternoon programme - Chaired by Sarah Schoch

13:30 - 14:15

14:15 - 15:00

15:00 - 15:45

15:45 - 16:15

16:15 - 17:05

17:15 - 18:05

What is Epic dreaming? - J.B. Maranci

From nightmare to night mastery: understanding and management of nightmares and related parasomnia in clinical practice - A. Van Schagen

Implications of hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences and LD for brain disorders - G. Foffani

Coffee Break

Parallel workshops

Workshop 1: Red room

Automatic dream report analysis: Advances and Limitations of Computational Linguistics for the Analysis of Dream Reports - V. Elce

Workshop 2: Oval Office 0.073

VR dreams are made of this: towards designing synthetic dream-like experiences using Virtual Reality - L. Eudave

Parallel workshops

Workshop 1: Red room

Sleep wearables: hardware and software to monitor and modulate sleep - M. J. Esfahani

Workshop 2: Trainee room 1.160

Best practices for robust and reproducible dream research in the 21st century - P. Zerr

Thursday June 6th

Lucid Dreaming

Morning programme - Chaired by Martin Dresler and Henry Hebron

09:00 - 09:30

09:30 - 10:00

10:00 - 10:30

10:30 - 11:15

11:15 - 12:00

12:00 - 13:00

Non-invasive lucid dream induction techniques in the sleep lab - E. Peters

Lucid dream induction using wearable EEG: from lab to home settings - M. J. Esfahani

Coffee Break

Novel Uses of Sleep and Dream Communication - K. Paller

Advanced dream communication - K. Appel

Lunch

Afternoon programme - Chaired by Sofia Tzioridou

13:00 - 13:45

13:45 - 14:30

14:30 - 15:15

15:15- 17:15

17:30- 19:30

Neural Correlates of Lucid Dreaming - N. Adelhöfer

Motor learning in lucid dreams - D. Erlacher

Lucid dreaming, mindfulness and meditation- T. Stumbrys

Social event: Play time at Brakkenstein Park

Evening lecture & drinks: S. LaBerge

Friday June 7th

Dream Engineering

Morning programme - Chaired by Martin Dresler

09:00 - 10:30

10:30 - 11:15

11:30 - 12:15

Project idea market + coffee

Manipulating sleep and dreams through closed-loop Neurostimulation - L. Talamini

[+ parallel collaboration projects]

Build a startup on dream/sleep applications - S.Wang (not online)

[+ parallel collaboration projects]

Afternoon programme - Chaired by Sarah Schoch

12:30 - 13:30

13:30 - 14:15

14:30 - 15:15

15:15- 15:30

15:30- 16:30

16:30

Lunch

Machine learning in Lucid Dreaming Research - A. Pavlou

[+ parallel collaboration projects]

Citizen neuroscience of dreaming - K. Appel

Coffee Break

Conclusion: new projects / consortia

Closure

Nico Adelhöfer

Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands


Nico Adelhöfer did a bachelor and master in psychology at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, and a PhD and postdoc at Technical University Dresden, with research stays at Bern University and Aarhus University. At the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab, he applies transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation on the sleeping brain to modulate dream content.


Thomas Andrillon

Paris Brain Institute, Sorbonne University & INSERM, Paris, France


My research aims at understanding how the activity of our brain (physiology) constrains our ability to interact with the external world (behaviour) and the sustainment of a stream of mental contents (phenomenology). To achieve this goal, I study different physiological,

behavioural and mental states: sleep and wakefulness, responsive and non-responsive states, dreaming and mind wandering. I use a combination of techniques and approaches to explore the physiology, cognition and consciousness of healthy individuals and clinical populations. I focus in particular on sleep (insomnia, narcolepsy, etc), attention (ADHD), and consciousness disorders with the firm conviction that basic and clinical research can jointly reach a better understanding of the brain and improved clinical care for patients.

Kristoffer Appel

Institute of Sleep and Dream Technologies, Hamburg, Germany


Kristoffer Appel, PhD in Cognitive Science, is based in Hamburg, Germany. He currently holds multiple roles: Director of the non-profit Institute of Sleep and Dream Technologies, Lecturer at Osnabrueck University, and Innovation Manager at a German public funding agency. In terms of research, he is particularly interested in leveraging modern technologies to advance our understanding of sleep and dreaming, as well as to make academic research accessible to the broader public.


Giulio Bernardi

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy


Giulio Bernardi is an Associate Professor of General Psychology at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Pisa Medical School, where he also obtained his PhD in Neuroscience. He conducted visiting research periods at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Center for Investigation and Research on Sleep of the Lausanne University Hospital. Dr. Bernardi's research focuses on the interactions between experience-dependent brain adaptations, sleep dynamics, and dream experiences in humans. His research is performed through the combination of multiple brain imaging methodologies, including magnetic resonance imaging and high-density electroencephalography.


Leonore Bovy

Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands


Leonore Bovy completed a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Maastricht University and a Research Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University. After earning her PhD on sleep and memory bias in depression at the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab, she has continued her research there as a part-time postdoctoral researcher for the past four years. Simultaneously, she has been employed as a Senior Solutions Engineer at a climate tech company.


Cathrin Canto

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,Guest researcher: Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam


Cathrin B. Canto currently works at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Making use of LFP, ECoG, extracellular and in vivo whole cell recordings together with transgenic interventions and optogenetic tools, she studies how sleep modulates cerebellar activity and cerebellar motor learning in mice.

In 2005 she started her Ph.D. dealing with the role of the entorhinal cortex in learning and memory processes at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, in Trondheim, Norway in the lab of Prof. Edvard Moser and the Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences (VU) under the mentorship of Prof. Menno Witter. After finishing her PhD, she moved to the lab of Prof De Zeeuw working on the role of the cerebellum in learning and memory processes, which she is still studying today.


Ema Demšar

Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Department of Philosophy, Monash University


Ema Demšar is a PhD candidate at Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies interested in investigating subjective experience in the research framework of neurophenomenology. She comes from an interdisciplinary background, with a BSc in Chemistry and a MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Ljubljana. Before starting her PhD, she spent five years teaching and doing research in cognitive science, with a focus on using phenomenological methods in the scientific study of experience. Ema’s PhD project is a neurophenomenological investigation of meta-awareness and lucidity in dreaming. The project centers on investigating the structure and dynamics of non-lucid, pre-lucid and lucid dream experiences. For this purpose, Ema is employing and adapting the micro-phenomenological interview method - originally developed for the study of waking experience - for the context of dream research.


Martin Dresler

Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Martin Dresler is head of the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab, and Associate Professor at Radboud University Medical Center. He received training in Biological Psychology, Philosophy and Mathematics at Bochum University, did his PhD at Marburg University and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, and performed postdoctoral research in Oxford and Stanford. The research of his group centers on the cognitive neuroscience of sleep.

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Valentina Elce

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, MoMiLab Research Unit, Lucca, Italy


I am a PostDoc in the Sleep, Plasticity, and Conscious Experience (SPACE) Group at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. I have a background in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, and I obtained a PhD in Cognitive, Computational, and Social Neurosciences. My work is mainly focused on the application of Computational Linguistics methods for the objective analysis of dream content and on the study of the individual determinants of dream content and dream recall frequency in physiological and pathological conditions.


Daniel Erlacher

University of Bern, Institute of Sport Science


Daniel Erlacher is a lecturer in Training Science and Sports Biology at the Institute of Sports Science at the University of Bern. His research interests include motor learning in lucid dreaming, sleep in competitive sports, and sleep-related regeneration processes.


Guglielmo Foffani

HM CINAC (Centro Integral de Neurociencias Abarca Campal), Hospital Universitario HM Puerta del Sur, HM Hospitales, Madrid, Spain


Guglielmo Foffani (Italy, 1977) is a biomedical engineer from the Politecnico di Milano (Italy, 2001) and holds a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Drexel University (USA, 2004). Recipient of the Young Investigator Award by the Spanish Society of Neuroscience in 2009, he has developed his neuroscientific career in Spain at Hospital Nacional de Parapléjicos (Toledo) and at Centro Integral de Neurociencias HM CINAC (Madrid), where he is scientific coordinator. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and is a co-founder of two spinoff companies that develop invasive and non-invasive brain stimulation technologies (Newronika, Neurek) and a start-up company that produces canned wine (Minuscola). He also has an extensive background as a pianist and experimental musician, collaborating with various groups and artistic initiatives.

Mahdad Jafarzadeh Esfahani

Donders Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Cognition, Radboudumc, The Netherlands


Mahdad Jafarzadeh Esfahani was born in Tehran, Iran in 1993. He received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical and electronics engineering from Azad university, central Tehran branch, Tehran, Iran in 2016. He patented his bachelor’s degree thesis entitled ‘Bluetooth-based communication aid for partially sighted people’. He then received his M.S. degree in Biomedical engineering, neural and motor systems from the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands in 2019. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Donders Institute, working on wearable EEG technologies to monitor and modulate sleep. His research interests include computational neuroscience, wearable systems, machine learning, signal processing, and lucid dreaming.

Célia Lacaux

Department of Basic Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva


Célia Lacaux received her master’s degrees from Ecole Normale Supérieure and University College London. She then completed a PhD at the Paris Brain Institute in 2021, under the supervision of Dr. Delpine Oudiette and Pr. Isabelle Arnulf. She now has a postdoctoral position in the Sleep and Cognition lab of Pr. Sophie Schwartz in Switzerland. Her research focuses primarily on the impact of sleep on memory and creativity.

Gert Jan Lammers

Dept. Neurology, Leiden University Medical Centre


Prof Gert Jan Lammers is an expert in sleep medicine as Professor of Sleep Medicine and medical director of SEIN's Sleep-Wake Expertise Centres in the Netherlands. He has years of experience in clinical care of sleep patients and research. His research focuses on hypersomnolence, the phenotyping of the different disorders of hypersomnolence, the burden of these disorders, diagnostic tools, the pathophysiology of the disorders including post-mortem brain research, the role of hypocretin/orexin (deficiency) and additionally nonpharmacological and pharmacological treatment.

He co-organised and performed at numerous international Master Classes dedicated to Narcolepsy and organised several European Narcolepsy Days. He was a member of the organising committee of the annual International Sleep Medicine Course (ISMC) between 2012 and 2021. He co-initiated and co-organised the first two-day Dutch Sleep Congress in 2016, which has since become a biennial national two-day sleep congress. He chaired the scientific committee in 2019 and co-chaired the organising committee in 2021 and 2023.

He wrote the very first chapters on sleep medicine in the Dutch textbook Neurology (first edition in 2010), co-authored the current chapters on hypersomnolence in the textbook of the Dutch Society for Sleep Medicine and was section editor for the second edition of the chapter on central disorders of hypersomnolence for the European Textbook on Sleep Medicine.

He was one of the founders of the Medium Care facility of the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery at LUMC in 1995 and the first medical manager. He then served as manager of the Neurology Department from 2005 to 2009. He later founded SEIN's Sleep-Wake Centre in Heemstede (2013) and became medical director of the Sleep-Wake Centres of all SEIN sites. He was a member and vice-chairman of the LUMC Medical Ethics Committee 2003-2006. He was co-founder and first chairman of the European Narcolepsy Network (2007-2014); board member of the Task Force on Sleep of the Dutch Neurological Society 2009-2015; board member of the Dutch Society for Sleep-Wake Research (NSWO) since 2014 and chairman in 2018; and co-founder and board member of the Dutch Society for Sleep Medicine (SVNL)" since 2015, and chairman from 2019 - 2024. In 2021 he was appointed as fellow of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN).

Eudave Luis

School of Education and Psychology, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain


My research career is developed from two lines of research. The first one revolves around cognitive assessment (motor learning, visual cognition) and its changes with age using functional magnetic resonance imaging and its application in activities of daily living, such as driving. The second one consists in the use of virtual (and extended) reality as a cognitive assessment tool, through the construction of more ecological experimental paradigms. On this line is where my passion for dreams and dream science is being worked on, using VR as a tool for the study of dreams. In addition, I have collaborated in synthesis research on the study of psychopathology in children and adolescents, as well as in large-scale collaborative projects (through the Psychological Science Accelerator) for the study and replication of effects in Psychology, under the principles of Open Science. I am part of a European Research Project (HORIZON-CL2-2022-TRANSFORMATIONS-01) and a PIUNA Research Project (University of Navarra). I have academic/research collaborations in VR projects between the Technisches Universitet Munchen and the Instituto Técnico Superior. Locally, I am part of the research group Cognitive and Affective Methods in Psychology (CAMP) at the University of Navarra.

Katharina Lüth

Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University


Katharina has studied Cognitive Science at Osnabrück University and is currently doing there. Her research focuses on lucid dreams, the treatment of nightmares and on emotion regulation during dreams. She co-leads the "Sleep & Dream" student initiative at Osnabrück University, a group of CogSci students working independently and self-organized on sleep and dream research. Katharina is deputy spokesperson of the German Sleep Research Society's (DGSM) dream working group. Outside academia, Katharina engages in science journalism, ensuring that her research extends beyond the university and reaches a broader audience.

Jean-Baptiste Maranci

Pitie Salpêtrière University hospital, Paris, Sorbonne université, Paris, Brain institute, Paris


I am psychiatrist specialized in sleep medicine. In my PhD I explored dreams emotions thanks to REM and NREM sleep parasomnia and lucid dreaming.


Ken Paller

Northwestern University, USA


Ken Paller holds the James Padilla Chair in Arts & Sciences in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. He also serves as Director of the Training Program in the Neuroscience of Human Cognition, funded by NIH and charged with training the next generation of cognitive neuroscientists. His research focuses on the human mind and the intricate relationships between brain activity and conscious experience. He seeks to uncover how memories are formed, stored, and later re-experienced — sometimes unconsciously influencing our thoughts and actions. His lab group developed new methods to strategically influence the mind during sleep, which in turn can improve many aspects of the waking mind, including memory, creativity, and psychological well-being. He also collaborates with Tibetan Monastic Scholars in related research. He loves contributing to these investigations, and he believes that scientific research can reveal additional ways to harness the sleeping mind to improve people’s lives.

Achilleas Pavlou

University of Nicosia Medical School


Dr. Achilleas Pavlou is a neuroscientist at the University of Nicosia Medical School, interested in applying machine (ML) in the psychology/neuroscience/medical research fields. His PhD work pioneered a personalised technique using ML to tailor auditory cues to the individual, enhancing their integration into dreams and alerting dreamers to their dreaming state


Mariana Pereira

Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherland


Mariana began her academic journey with a Bachelor's in Telecommunications Engineering from the Federal University of São João del-Rei (Brazil). During this time, she immersed herself in the field of neuroimaging with EEG signals. However, her exposure to MRI during an exchange program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (United States) ignited her fascination with the neurological basis of neurodegenerative diseases and their relationship to REM sleep and vivid dreams. Later, she enrolled in the Master's program in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Campinas (Brazil), where she focused on applying deep machine learning algorithms to analyze structural MRI data to classify different stages of Alzheimer's disease. Her thirst for understanding the mysteries of the brain during sleep led her to pursue a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Martin Dresler at the Donders Institute (Netherlands). Her research uses multimodal neuroimaging techniques to unravel the mysterious nature of dreams, dream traits, and REM sleep.


Emma Peters

Institute for Sports Science (ISPW), University of Bern, Switzerland


Emma Peters is a PhD student at the University of Bern, specializing in lucid dream induction and dream engineering. With a background in medical biology and cognitive neuroscience, she brings a multidisciplinary perspective to her research. Emma started exploring lucid dreaming extensively during her bachelor's studies, and continued through her master's degree, both at the Sleep and Memory Lab in Nijmegen. Her current research at the University of Bern, Switzerland focuses on investigating the relationship between the physical and dream body.


Yevgenia Rosenblum

Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands


Dr. Yevgenia Rosenblum completed her bachelor's in biology and her master’s in neurobiology at Tel Aviv University. During her PhD at Tel Aviv Medical Center, she integrated clinical, neuropsychological, neurophysiological and genetic data to assess disease-specific neural correlates of cognitive impairment seen in such neurodegenerative diseases as Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. She also worked as a lecturer at the D. Lautman Unit for Science-Oriented Youth at the Faculty of Education of Tel Aviv University and at the Ministry of Education (Jerusalem). Currently, she is a post-doctoral researcher at Donders Sleep and Memory Lab, where she explores the structure and function of sleep while working on such projects as the role of sleep in brain clearance, polyphasic sleep, sleep in major depressive disorder and aperiodic neural activity during sleep.

Perrine Ruby

Lyon Neuroscience Research Center

Perception Attention and Memory team (PAM)


Perrine Ruby is a senior researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience, co-head of the Perception Attention and Memory team (PAM) of the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Lyon, France. Her main topics of interest are dreaming, cognition during sleep and social cognition (theory of mind, self, default mode of the brain, emotions). She is adressing these issues both with behavioural and neuroimaging technics (PET, fMRI, intra and scalp EEG, MEG). She received her PhD in Neuroscience in 2002 for a work entitled " Distinction between first- and third-person perspective - neurophysiological correlates in humans". From 2002-2005, she was a post-doc in the Cyclotron Research Center of Liège where she worked with Pierre Maquet on the role of sleep in memory (behaviour and fMRI) and Eric Salmon on perspective taking in patients with neurodegenerative diseases (Frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease, behaviour and PET). In 2005 she gained a permanent researcher position at INSERM and started a research projet on dreaming.

Sarah Schoch

Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands


Sarah Schoch completed her bachelor in psychology, biology, and education, and her master in psychology at the University of Zurich. In her master's thesis she examined the effects of dream incorporation as well as serial awakenings on memory consolidation. During her PhD at the University of Zurich and at the Salk Institute in San Diego, she investigated how sleep and gut microbiota develop in infancy, showing an early sleep-gut-brain axis. In her postdoctoral research in the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, she investigates the association between dreaming and memory consolidation and how our body and brain interact during sleeping and dreaming.


Walter Senn

Department of Physiology, and Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, University of Bern


Walter Senn is Professor for Computational Neuroscience and co-director of the Department of Physiology, University of Bern. He studied Mathematics and Physics, with a PhD in differential geometry and calculus of variation (1993). During his PhD he studied dynamical systems at Lomonossov University in Moscow, and he got a degree as a high school teacher from University of Zurich. Before joining the Department of Physiology (1999), he was at the Department of Computer Science at University of Bern, spending postdoc time at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (I. Segev), and the Center for Neural Sciences, New York University (J. Rinzel). Using mathematical models of synapses, neurons and networks, he investigates how cognitive phenomena such as perception, learning and memory can emerge from neuronal substrates. His recent interests are devoted to translate principles of cortical computation into algorithms for neuromorphic systems (with M. Petrovici), inspired by progress in AI (partly with Y. Bengio).


Peter Simor

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.


Peter Simor is a psychologist with a particular interest in the neuroscience of sleep. He received his Ph.D. in 2014 in the Cognitive Science Department of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. His doctoral research focused on the neurophysiological aspects of idiopathic nightmare disorder and highlighted the key mechanism of hyperarousal in the pathophysiology of frequent nightmares. Although his lab is continuing the research activity on nightmare disorder, their research area has become broader, including such topics as the microstructure of REM sleep, sleep, and memory, mind wandering and information processing, lucid dreaming, and the role of sleep and dream quality in daytime experiences and mental health. Currently, he is the head of the Budapest Laboratory of Sleep and Cognition, working mainly with sleep EEG in addition to cognitive tests and psychometric measures to study the complex nature of sleep and its role in daytime functions.


Francesca Siclari

Netherland institute for neuroscience, Amsterdam,


Francesca Siclari directs the Sleep and Dreams research group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam and is an invited Professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She earned her MD at the University of Geneva, specialized in neurology and sleep medicine at the University Hospitals in Lausanne and Zürich and completed her research training in Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, US. Her research focuses on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying dreaming, which she investigates using electrophysiology (high-density EEG recordings with source modeling, evoked potentials), combined with extensive sampling of conscious experiences through serial awakening paradigms. She also relies on clinical observations she makes in patients with sleep disorders. Her research is supported by competitive funding schemes of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the European Research Council.


Lucia Talamini

Amsterdam Sleep and Memory Lab, Psychology Inst, University of Amsterdam


Lucia Talamini heads the UvA’s Sleep and Memory Lab. Her research on sleep and memory occurs at the interface of neuroscience, psychology and technology. She has authored over 70 scientific publications, holds two patents and has been awarded many grants including a VIDI innovation grant.

Research in the lab regards higher-order information processing during sleep and other alternative states of consciousness. Several lines of research investigate how such off line processing contributes to cognitive function and emotional housekeeping. The lab has a strong emphasis on neurotech development, including advanced methods to read and influence brain activity. Such non-invasive brain manipulations have been used, for instance, to deepen sleep and to influence memories during sleep. Talamini collaborates with several partners in academia and industry to develop clinical as well as non-clinical applications based on the labs findings.


Eus van Someren

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Prof Eus Van Someren leads the Sleep & Cognition group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and is professor at the VU and Amsterdam UMC. He was trained in physics, psychophysiology and neuropsychology and received a cum laude PhD in neurobiology from the faculty of medicine. Devoted to fundamental research on insomnia, as well as better and more accessible treatment, he acquired prestigious grants, including twice an ERC-AdG. He co-authored more than 300 widely read publications (~219k citations, Scopus h-index 74) in leading journals such as NJEM, Jama, Nature Genetics & Neuroscience and Lancet Psychiatry. His group collaborates with thousands of good- and bad-sleeping volunteers via slaapregister.nl to unravel brain mechanisms of insomnia treatment to prevent mental illness. Combining sleep and affective neuroscience, he proposed an innovative integrative model of how restless REM sleep and locus coeruleus activity affects limbic plasticity, emotional processing, subjective nocturnal mental content and psychopathology. He is a globally respected advocate for better attention to insomnia. His informal manner and enthusiasm make him an often-requested speaker for general audiences, including at TED-X.


Annette van Schagen

ARQ Centrum’45, ARQ National Psychotrauma Center, Oegstgeest, The Netherlands


Annette van Schagen, PhD, is a certified clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with a decade of experience at the ARQ Centrum'45, the national expertise center for the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with complex psychotrauma disorders. Her specialty includes the diagnosis and treatment of nightmares and sleep disturbances associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a senior researcher, she explores the potential of psychedelics in the treatment of PTSD and leads a project on using virtual reality to enhance imagery rehearsal therapy for treating nightmares in military veterans.

Dr. van Schagen earned her PhD from Utrecht University with a thesis on the prevalence and treatment of nightmares in secondary mental healthcare. She holds certifications in cognitive behavioral therapy, with expertise in trauma-focused therapies such as prolonged exposure, narrative exposure therapy, EMDR, and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, among others. She co-authored the Dutch treatment protocol for imagery rehearsal therapy of nightmares and has published multiple peer-reviewed articles on sleep problems related to mental disorders. Additionally, she conducts training for mental healthcare professionals.

Furthermore, Dr. van Schagen is the deputy director of the postmaster specialist clinical psychology residency program in Leiden, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, contributing to the education and training of future clinical psychologists in the Netherlands.

Katja Valli

Department of Psychology & Speech-Language Pathology, University of Turku, Finland, and Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden


Katja Valli, PhD, is a Professor at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, and an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Finland. Her research interests focus on the content, function, and neural correlates of dreaming, and on understanding the neural mechanisms of conscious experiences in general. She has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on dreaming and consciousness and edited, together with Robert J. Hoss the reference work Dreams: Understanding Biology, Psychology and Culture (Vol. 1) published in 2019 by Greenwood, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Tadas Stumbrys

Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University (Lithuania)


Tadas Stumbrys, PhD, is Associate Professor in Psychology at Vilnius University (Lithuania) and Assistant Director for Research and a Core Faculty member at Alef Trust (UK). He also serves as a Board Member for Lithuanian Association for Mindfulness-Based Psychology. Tadas has been involved in lucid dream research for more than 15 years and has co-authored over 30 publications in the field. His primary research interests focus on phenomenology of lucid dreaming and its potentials for self-development and growth.


Sarah Wang

BrainUp Tech

Sarah Wang holds a master degree in Statistics from Harvard University and dual bachelor degrees in IEOR and Business of Administration from University of California, Berkeley. She has held key roles in industry including Founder of Naolu Brain Tech, Head of Anbang Fin-tech and Data Analyst at Yahoo Inc. Sarah Wang has published in journals such as IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, Neurology and Therapy, Scientific Reports, and Alzheimer's Research & Therapy.


Sarah’s projects extend to live demonstrations at conferences like IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS), where showcased innovations like the stimulation senseless based visual brain-computer interface for daily uses. Additionally, Sarah has initiated projects such as the DEED dream EEG database.


Paul Zerr

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands


Paul Zerr has been researching visual psychophysics, perception, working memory and eye movements at Utrecht University, Hamburg University and the Icelandic University. At the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab he is now investigating eye movements during sleep and dreaming, lucid dreaming induction and big sleep data.