Temporal references in dreams and autobiographical memory
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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection
Published on: August 26, 2011
Jean Grenier1, Philippe Cappeliez, Mélanie St-Onge
1University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract:
In an attempt to determine whether temporal references identified in dreams follow the same temporal distributions as those documented for autobiographical memories, 28 younger women (18-35 years of age) and 30 older women (60-77 years of age) kept a home dream diary for 1 week and then slept 1 night in the laboratory for rapid eye movement sleep dream collection. The following morning, they identified temporal references in their dreams and produced a sample of autobiographical memories using the semantic cuing method. For both groups, there was a linear decrease in temporal references identified in dreams and autobiographical memories with increased remoteness for the last 30 years. As predicted, for the older group, there were similar cubic trends reflecting a disproportionately higher number of both temporal references identified in dreams and autobiographical memories from adolescence/early adulthood compared with adulthood and childhood. The results support the notion of continuity between waking and dreaming memory processes.
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