The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming

The Where, How, When, What, and Why of Dreams

The following PDF handout summarizes Bill Domhoff's neurocognitive approach to understanding dreaming and dream content, based on studies by a wide range of researchers. It was originally prepared for the 2019 meeting of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity.

(PDF, 300 KB)

The ideas and findings in this document are addressed more fully, along with many other topics, in Bill's newest book, The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming, which will be published by MIT Press in 2022.

About DreamResearch.net

This Web site's focus is the scientific studies of dreams, mostly using a system of content analysis.

Journalists might be interested in a paper of ours that points out how the media usually go wrong in their coverage of dream research.

Researchers or college/graduate students interested in doing quantitative research should check out the Resources for Scientists page. 

If you'd like a multimedia overview of some of our noteworthy findings and methods, you can watch Bill Domhoff's 2017 lecture entitled "Seven Surprising Discoveries That Changed My Thinking About Dreams," which is one of several videos featured on our Videos page.

And, of course, we have a list of FAQs, including the most frequently asked question of all: What is the purpose of dreams?