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The International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD)
in conjunction with the DreamScience ™ foundation (DSF)
is proud to announce the following research grant award winners for 2010.
There were five finalists out of a field of sixteen proposals received. Unfortunately we were only able to fund
three. We thank all sixteen who contributed very excellent proposals in 2010, we hope your
research efforts will continue. Congratulations to these three awardees:
1) “The incorporation of emotional memories into
dreams: A link to memory consolidation.” A $4,000 grant is awarded to
Caroline Horton, PhD to perform a study which will measure the emotionality
of daily events (autobiographical memories) that are subsequently
incorporated into dreams and determine if the incorporation into dreams
provides a memory advantage. This study would provide valuable support to
various neurological theories that the emotionality of a memory influences
its consolidation during sleep and dreaming. The study will be performed at
Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.
2) “Pregnancy dreams: A study of the association between maternal
representations in dreams of pregnant women and postnatal depression.” A
$1,000 grant is awarded to the research team of Jessica Lara-Carrasco, MSc &
PhD Candidate, Tore Nielsen, PhD (director), and Valérie Simard, PhD (codirector),
to complete the study which has been partially funded by an allowance of
$5000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The study is aimed at
assessing dream and nightmare recall in pregnant women and whether dream
content facilitates psychological adaptation during the transition to
motherhood and perhaps whether dreams have the capacity to predict postnatal
depression. The research will be performed at the Centre d’étude du sommeil,
Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Département de psychologie, Université
de Montréal.
3) “The threat simulation theory and genetics of dreaming: Heredity of
nightmares.” A $2,000 grant is awarded to Nils Sandman M.Sc, supervised by
Katja Valli, PhD and Professor Antti Revonsuo / Centre for Cognitive
Neuroscience, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Philosophy, University
of Turku, Finland. The research investigates the hypotheses of the genetic
basis of dreaming (that people´s tendency to dream of threatening situations
has a genetic component) as the threat simulation theory (Revonsuo, 2000)
implies. This study aims to identify those regions of the human genome that
affect the tendency to experience nightmares. This seed grant is aimed at
completing the statistical population survey data analysis, in preparation
for the analysis of the genetic data for which future funding is expected
from another source.
The other two finalists who had highly rated proposals but that we
unfortunately did not have the finances this year to fund were:
1) “Mastering Lucidity: Ethnographic Perspectives of Lucid Dreaming in
Shamanic Practices
Identify the types and uses of trance and dream states within Blackfoot
shamanism.” This proposal, by Shayne Dahl, at Trent University in Canada,
was aimed at identifying the types and uses of trance and dream states
within Blackfoot shamanism and compare the Blackfoot trance and dream
theories to those of other shamanic cultures and psychological definitions.
2) “Holistic versus Analytical Perception in Dreams: A Comparison between
Japanese Culture and American Culture.” This proposal, by Misa Tsuruta, MA
of the New School for Social Research in New York, was aimed at examining
cultural differences between the American and Japanese culture that might be
represented in dreams. More specifically, assuming Easterners tend to
process contextual and broader information while Westerners pay less
attention to such information, the study was to determine if the dreamer
pays their first attention to a focal object or environment and background.
