Investigating Dreams in Relation to Digital Media Use, Resilience, and Musical Stimuli
Explore how pre-sleep and in-sleep experiences with digital media and sounds shape dreams and emotional health. Engage in hands-on night studies using physiological monitoring and experimental manipulations.
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Project Description
Project Overview
This project aims to investigate how dreams are shaped by digital media use, resilience factors, and musical stimuli. It will examine the influence of pre-sleep and in-sleep experiences such as exposure to digital media or auditory stimuli on dream content, emotional processing, and sleep-dependent recovery processes.
What You Will Do
The PhD student will mainly conduct night studies with healthy participants, involving serial awakenings to collect dream reports. Experimental manipulations will be applied before and during sleep (e.g., controlled pre-sleep media use and auditory stimulation). Physiological measures including EEG, EOG, EMG, SCR, heart rate, and breathing will be recorded. The candidate will be involved in study design, participant recruitment, data collection and analysis, publication, and supervising bachelor and master students.
Expected Outcomes
The project is expected to clarify the role of digital media and auditory inputs in modifying dream experiences and their potential effects on emotional regulation and recovery during sleep. This could provide novel insights into sleep-dependent cognitive and emotional functions.
Why This Matters
Understanding how digital media influences dreaming and emotional processing during sleep is critical given modern media habits. The research may inform interventions to improve sleep quality, emotional wellbeing, and resilience through targeted auditory stimuli or managing digital media exposure.
Entry Requirements
How to Apply
Eligibility
Supervisor Profile
Prof. Dr. Björn Rasch is a leading researcher in cognitive biopsychology focusing on sleep and memory consolidation. He employs physiological methods such as EEG to investigate how sleep, particularly slow-wave sleep, affects emotional and declarative memory. He is well-cited in the field with influential papers on sleep's role in memory and experimental interventions during sleep.