The Neural Correlates of Dreaming Have Not Been Identified Yet. Commentary on “The Neural Correlates of Dreaming. Nat Neurosci. 2017”

Are detailed below the theoretical and methodological concerns identified reading the Siclari et al. article published in Nature Neuroscience (2017) and preventing one from concluding that their data unveiled “The neural correlates of dreaming.” While a participant is sleeping in the lab with EEG electrodes on the scalp, he/she is awakened several times to report what was in his/her mind just before awakening. [...]the case presented in Figure 1D (the forgotten dream), is not taken into account in the article “The neural correlates of dreaming,” since the authors considered that no dream reports equals no dream activity in the preceding sleep. Unfortunately, at the end, the scientific benefit of invalidating the results presented in “The neural correlates of dreaming” is scarce because previous work already demonstrated the low reliability of the results obtained with this paradigm and also because the visibility of the Wong et al. article (as all the other ones in Table 1) is far lower than the visibility of the Siclari et al. article in Nature Neuroscience.