Our research

The Consciousness and Psychopathology lab focuses on unique states of consciousness, and their relation to psychopathology and stress. In waking, these states include phenomena such as dissociative experiences, altered consciousness personality traits, and maladaptive daydreaming (click here for the website of The International Consortium for Maladaptive Daydreaming Research). In sleep, they include special dream and sleep experiences such as nightmares, recurring dreams, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations. Research carried out by lab director Prof. Nirit Soffer-Dudek focusing on such nocturnal phenomena of altered consciousness suggests that it reflects continuous arousal and emotional distress, carried over from waking to sleep. Recent work from our lab focuses on the specific relationships between dissociative experiences and depression and anxiety symptoms, and especially, links between common dissociative experiences and obsessive-compulsive disorder.