Manuela Kirberg

Monash University (Australia) · School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies

Do the words we use reveal how we feel? While much research has explored language use in social media, little is known about how the content of spontaneous thoughts and experiences—daytime mind-wandering and nighttime dreaming—reflects well-being and ill-being. Here, we analyzed 1496 mind-wandering reports (N = 152) and 1781 dream reports (N = 172)...

This paper aims to contribute to an integrated understanding of what goes missing in adverse meditation experiences and in cases of depersonalization disorder. Depersonalization disorder is characterized by distressing alterations in, and sometimes the complete disappearance of, the 'I'-sense. This paper examines the nature of the 'I'-sense and wha...

Spontaneous thoughts, such as dreaming and mind wandering, constitute a significant portion of human consciousness. Yet, the precise phenomenological and content-related similarities and differences between dreaming and waking mind wandering remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we address this gap by comparing 340 dreaming and mind wand...

The language people use in everyday life provides a window into the mind. Mind-wandering and dreams have been thought to reflect unique individual differences and mental health. Here we use a large dataset of mind-wandering (n=1619) and dream (n=1434) reports from 176 individuals in conjunction with graph theory applied to natural language. We find...

Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people’s spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19-related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry...

Although we are beginning to understand the neurocognitive processes that underlie the emergence of dreaming, what accounts for the bizarre phenomenology of dreams remains debated. I address this question by comparing dreaming with waking mind wandering and challenging previous accounts that utilize bizarreness to mark a sharp divide between consci...

Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people’s spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19 related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry...

This article surveys some of the major milestones of scientific dream research, often in response to sleep research, as well as main points of exchange and disagreement with philosophy, with a focus on Western philosophy and non-lucid dreams. It argues that the increasing establishment of dreaming as a target phenomenon for the interdisciplinary st...