Katja Valli

Biography

The explanation of consciousness poses one of the greatest challenges to science. Dreaming could be used as a model system in consciousness research, as it is a pure form of consciousness created solely by the brain when we are disconnected from environment. Dreaming and dreamless sleep allow the investigation of the neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness without the distractions that studying the waking (and always conscious) mind includes. Thus, as all subjective experiences must have neural correlates, I’m interested in the neural correlates of dreaming. Therefore in our team we have investigated, with EEG, the differences between dreamless and dreaming sleep, both in NREM and REM stages of sleep. Second, we still do not know if dreaming, the nocturnal form of consciousness, serves any function. Are dreams just a random noise in the machine, or could dreaming, or dreaming about particular things, have served some sort of adaptive purpose in the ancestral environment? Thus, my research interests also focus on the evolutionary function of sleep and dreaming. This question is approached by using systematic dream data collection (home and laboratory) and content analysis to reveal the statistically significant patterns in dream content.

Research Interest

My areas of expertise include consciousness research, especially altered states of consciousness, specifically dream and sleep research. I approach these from evolutionary psychological perspective.