This is Episode 22 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. 

In this episode, Ella Rhodes, Journalist for The Psychologist, explores the boundaries between wakefulness and dreaming. What can we can learn about consciousness from the strange transition period between being awake and asleep, known as hypnagogia? And why do some people experience visions and imaginings that take them away for hours at a time?

Our guests, in order of appearance, are Dr Valdas Noreika, lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, and Dr Nirit Soffer-Dudek, clinical psychologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

Episode credits: Presented and produced by Ella Rhodes, with additional content from Matthew Warren. Mixing and editing by Jeff Knowler. PsychCrunch theme music by Catherine Loveday and Jeff Knowler. Art work by Tim Grimshaw.

Background reading for this episode:

Dreams: Everyone’s Guide to Inner Space, a paper by Deborah Wesley, is free to access thanks to our sponsors Routledge Psychology.

Relevant research from our guests includes:

• Intrusions of a drowsy mind: neural markers of phenomenological unpredictability
• Trapped in a Daydream: Daily Elevations in Maladaptive Daydreaming Are Associated With Daily Psychopathological Symptoms
• The Comorbidity of Daydreaming Disorder (Maladaptive Daydreaming)