We are happy to announce our Keynote and Invited speakers for the upcoming conference.
Keynotes: Dr Francesca Siclari, David M. Peña-Guzmán,
Dr Newton Kondaveti & Dr Lakshmi Newton, Michael Schredl
Invited Speakers: Martin Dresler, Phd., Marja Moors
Dr Francesca Siclari , Netherlands institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The Electrophysiological Landscape of Sleep and Dreams
Sleep is characterized by a wide spectrum of conscious experiences, ranging from unconsciousness to vivid hallucinatory experiences in the form of dreams. In this talk I will present a series of studies assessing the neural correlates of sleep-related conscious experiences in both healthy sleepers as well as in patients with sleep disorders.
Bio: Francesca Siclari is a tenured group leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences and an invited Professor at the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland. She was trained as a neurologist and sleep specialist at the Universities of Lausanne and Zürich and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin. Her work focuses on the neural basis of dreaming, which she investigates using neurophysiological techniques combined with extensive sampling of dream experiences.
David M. Peña-Guzmán , Associate Professor, Humanities, San Francisco State University
Nonhuman Dreamers
Stories of dreaming animals populate the history of Western philosophy and modern science, from the Roman antiquity of Lucretius to the British modernity of the father of evolutionary theory, Darwin. Are these stories credible indicators of the complexity of the minds of nonhuman animals, or fanciful projections of a uniquely human capacity onto the nonhuman? In this presentation, we will consider research that strongly suggests that a wide range of nonhuman creatures experience those nightly “visions” that take hold of the mind when the physiology of sleep reduces the external world to silence. Then, we will explore what the dreams of these creatures mean for theories of animal cognition, especially in connection to imagination. Dreaming, in short, reveals nonhuman animals to be imaginative agents capable of impressive mental feats that, when properly understood, should make us reconsider some of our most deeply rooted assumptions about the human-animal divide.
Bio: David M. Peña-Guzmán is Associate Professor of Humanities at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California. He specializes in animal studies, the history and philosophy of science, theories of consciousness, and 20th century French philosophy. He is the author of When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness, and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief. He is also co-host of the philosophy podcast Overthink.
Dr Newton Kondaveti and Dr Lakshmi Newton , Founders of Quantum Life University, Hyderabad, India
Who is Dreaming?
We are fundamentally a conglomeration of units of consciousness, energy and wisdom.
Our consciousness is experimenting, exploring and experiencing through different states of consciousness. One of the ancient scriptures from Bharat, Mandukhya Upanishad, talks about four states of consciousness: jagrat (waking), swapna (dream), sushipti (deep unconscious) and turiya (transcendental).
In this keynote speech, we will be sharing about the spiritual science of dreams from the perspective of ancient seers.
Bio(s): Dr Newton Kondaveti and Dr Lakshmi Newton are New Age Masters who are the founders of Quantum Life University , India (www.qluglobal.org) with eighteen schools of wisdom, one of them being the School of Dreams. They are world-renowned experts in Past Life Regression, Inner Child Healing, Rebirthing Breathwork, Family Constellation, and Organizational Constellation. Together they have travelled to more than 120 countries and touched the lives of millions of people with their teachings. Their vision is to establish a Global Centre for Learning Spiritual Sciences along the lines of the Ancient Indian Universities of Takshashila and Nalanda.
Michael Schredl, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
Analysing a Long Dream Series – What Can We Learn about Dreams?
Abstract: Studying a long dream series provides a unique window into dreaming. The talk is based on 12,769 dreams of the speaker, who has been keeping a dream journal since 1984. The analysis looks at topics like family members, schoolmates, partners, hobbies, and pain; but also mundane things like money or beds. The speaker addresses the question: “Can we learn something about dreaming by examining closely the relationship between dreaming and waking life?”
Bio: Since 1990, Michael Schredl has been working in the sleep laboratory of the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany. His publications cover various topics such as dream recall, dream content analysis, nightmares, dreams and sleep disorders, and sleep physiology. He is the editor of the online-journal International Journal of Dream Research.
Invited Presenters
Martin Dresler PhD, Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud Univ. Medical Centre
The Neuroscience of Lucid Dreaming: Past, Present, Future
Lucid dreaming allows conscious awareness and control of vivid dream states; however, its rarity and instability make neuroscientific experimentation challenging. In this lecture I will highlight past research on the neuroscience of lucid dreaming, and explore how advances in wearable neurotechnology, large-scale collaborations, citizen neuroscience and artificial intelligence can help to facilitate the decoding of this intriguing phenomenon.
Bio: Martin Dresler is head of the Donders Sleep and Memory Lab, and Associate Professor at Radboud University Medical Center. He received training in Biological Psychology, Philosophy and Mathematics at Bochum University, did his Ph.D. at Marburg University and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, and performed postdoctoral research in Oxford and Stanford. The research of his group centers on the cognitive neuroscience of sleep.
Marja Moors , Dutch Psychologist and Relationship Therapist at Dreaming Together
Pearls on the Healing Path – How Dreams Support us during a Disease.
In November 2023, six months after the publication of her autobiographical book on alchemy and dreams In Dialoog met het Onbewuste, Dromen en Alchemie in Tijden van Verandering, Marja unexpectedly received a breast cancer diagnosis. Immediately, she felt the impulse to investigate how dreams and the use of visualizations could help her in the healing process. Especially during the first episode after such a diagnosis, one feels quite helpless: how to navigate among all the choices that have to be made without enough knowledge and a clear overview available. Supportive dream images showed up for her during tough times, in which the chemo treatment was a challenge. In her presentation, she will share her healing journey and the most precious dream pearls she found along the way.
Bio: MSc. Marja Moors is a clinical psychologist, couples therapist and dream investigator with a private practice (Dreaming Together) in Heemstede, the Netherlands. In her work as a therapist, she combines regular methods like cognitive behavioral therapy with methods like mindfulness and constellation- and-dreamwork. In May 2023, her book In Dialoog met het Onbewuste (In Dialogue with the Unconscious) was published, in which she shows how alchemical processes become visible in what seem to be ordinary dream