Ken Paller

Isrw group photo

Still pumped up from yesterday's international sleep replay workshop! Provocative talks, engaging discussion groups & enthusiastic engagement by all attendees from undergrads to full professors. Stay tuned for info on the next one. And now, on to @cnsmtg.bsky.social. Check out our lab's posters!

Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep Abstract. Dreams have arguably been a source of creative insight for millennia. The specific assertion that dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep pr

🚨 New article in #NCONSC

Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

@paller.bsky.social

#consciousness
🧠🧪

academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

Can Dreams Help You Solve Problems? Researchers wonder whether the dreaming state might be doing more than you realize.

Nice coverage of the recent Neuroscience-of-Consciousness article from the PhD dissertation of @karenkonkoly.bsky.social here in TIME magazine, with a photo showing how dreams help you put all the puzzle pieces of your life together
time.com/7381398/can-...

Sure - send me an email message

Why your most creative ideas may come after a night of sleep Got a problem? Science says you should sleep on it.

@carolynyjohnson.bsky.social did an excellent job today of summarizing the research and key issues surrounding the idea of "sleeping on it" (Not A Myth) — Thank You Carolyn!
wapo.st/4rqb1LF

Cool results from @tschreiner.bsky.social and colleagues: memory reactivation and retrieval found to vary with phase of respiration

How Scientists Hacked People’s Dreams to Help Them Solve Real-Life Puzzles A new study in Neuroscience of Consciousness tested whether researchers could steer dream content during REM sleep using audio cues.

More coverage of Karen's @karenkonkoly.bsky.social study www.vice.com/en/article/h...

Did Scientists Just Achieve "Inception"? Experiments Show “Dream Engineering” May Be a Reality Experiments involving playing music during sleep have revealed a type of dream engineering that doubled subjects' problem-solving abilities.

Nice coverage of present and future hopes for research using dream engineering — from the PhD dissertation work of Karen Konkoly @karenkonkoly.bsky.social and her new publication in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness @nconsc.bsky.social — here at The Debrief thedebrief.org/did-scientis...

Harnessing dreams to solve puzzles is no fantasy

Karen Konkoly's @karenkonkoly.bsky.social latest dream research on the front page of The Times, with the heading: Harnessing dreams to solve puzzles is no fantasy

Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep Abstract. Dreams have arguably been a source of creative insight for millennia. The specific assertion that dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep pr

New publication out today from the amazing PhD dissertation of Karen Konkoly @karenkonkoly.bsky.social in Neuroscience of Consciousness @nconsc.bsky.social : Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

Come to the International Sleep Replay Workshop in Vancouver on March 6th — registration and poster submission closes Feb 15 isrw.bio.uci.edu
The workshop will include symposia, short talks, posters, discussion groups, and many opportunities to interact - Memory - Sleep - Dreaming - and more

This applies to everyone

#CNS2026 Satellite - International Sleep Replay Workshop

Friday, March 6, 2026, 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, Salon F

The workshop is open to all: experience with sleep research is not required. Registration for this satellite event is separate to CNS 2026. Register here: isrw.bio.uci.edu Deadline, Feb 15th

I am so proud to be part of a community who does not rest in this fight for justice. We are a city that resists come rain or come shine.

Guest Essay: ICE committed murder in Minneapolis - where do we go from here? - Evanston RoundTable I first started to write this piece on the evening of January 7th. I saw at around 11 a.m. that morning that a woman in Minnesota had been shot by ICE. At

Guest Essay: ICE committed murder in Minneapolis - where do we go from here? evanstonroundtable.com/2026/01/18/g...

This is actually extremely troubling because it means that every ICE employee has a 50K incentive to help ensure that Trump (or JD) is re-elected.

Meditation Research Program Select Publications

Please find the full PDF on our website and from the publisher here:

meditation.mgh.harvard.edu

meditation.mgh.harvard.edu/files/Prueit...

doi.org/10.1093/nc/n...

May this work become a benefit to all who grapple with the puzzles, perils, and possibilities of pain 🙏

About 100 people at this vigil in Evanston, IL, to mourn Renee Nicole Good, victim of ICE terrorism.

Laura’s great public service — advice related to possible early signs of dementia

Getting the word out about sleep apnea

Sleep colleagues, please submit tonight to be considered for a short talk.

The 5th International Sleep Replay Workshop is just 80 days away- Mar 6th in Vancouver!

isrw.bio.uci.edu

If you'd like to be considered to give a short talk, register by December 19th, 2025.

General registration & poster submission ends February 15th, 2026.

@cnsmtg.bsky.social

Please repost

Thanks to @cnn.com for covering our research on London taxi drivers in their new, rather chatty, format 'Creators'

Taxi driver Tom Scullion is the star of this piece. He trains others to learn the knowledge an has so many insights into that process.
#neuroskyence

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7df...

CNS 2026! Be sure to register - it will be great to see so many cognitive science and neuroscience folks coming to Vancouver. And be sure to also check out the affiliated International Sleep Replay Workshop: isrw.bio.uci.edu

The Long-Disputed Science of Twin Studies Twin studies and heritability estimates are used in support of biological determinism and in defense of the global inequality status quo.

This critique of twin studies is well written and convincing. www.madinamerica.com/2024/09/the-...

How Your Brain Creates ‘Aha’ Moments and Why They Stick | Quanta Magazine A sudden flash of insight is a product of your brain. Neuroscientists track the neural activity underlying an “aha” and how it might boost memory.

Scientists have pinpointed how the brain generates ‘aha’ moments. Neuroscientists have identified a clear brain pattern behind the phenomenon of sudden insight, by scanning volunteers as they deciphered hidden images. buff.ly/pW93qmK
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Announcing the 5th International Sleep Replay Workshop (ISRW): March 6, 2026, Vancouver, prior to CNS.
Program: poster session, discussion groups, 2 symposia, 7 short talks, & many opportunities to interact.
Register by Dec 19 at isrw.bio.uci.edu
All researchers focused on sleep/cognition welcome.

The 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century (so far), picked by the world’s top thinkers | BBC Science Focus Magazine We're a quarter of the way into the new century. To mark this milestone, we asked the UK's top minds to highlight some of the game-changing scientific breakthroughs shaping our world since the year 20...

The 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century:

1. Dream engineering

"For years, trying to convince scientists to take dreams seriously was a nightmare. Now the tide has turned ..."

www.sciencefocus.com/future-techn...

MIT Consciousness Club The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...

Tomorrow 12pm (ET) at the MIT Consciousness Club. Consciousness Emerges From Neural Dynamics - Earl K. Miller (hey, that's me!). Join us via Zoom.
sites.google.com/view/mit-con...
#neuroscience