Dream incubation: can you choose what you dream about?

Dream incubation is the practice of choosing a theme, an image or a question at bedtime and carrying it into sleep. In research, a version that plays words or sounds as you drift off is called targeted dream incubation.

A 1977 experiment asked 29 people to try for 10 nights to influence their dreams using techniques from a popular book. Four judges tried to identify each person's chosen theme from their dream reports, and could not do better than chance. The authors found no reliable evidence that conscious presleep suggestions are incorporated into dreams. It was a small, old study.¹

A 2023 controlled experiment played auditory cues at sleep onset to introduce specific themes into dreams. Creative performance on theme related tasks was better after a period of light sleep than after wakefulness, and better still when the theme was successfully incubated.²

In a 2025 study, people listened to different audiobooks before falling asleep, and blind raters could tell which audiobook each person had heard from their dream reports. A 2026 study had people listen to an audiobook while falling asleep and woke them several times to report their dreams. Dreams across the night contained specific information about the story.^{3, 4}

A 2024 review of 29 studies of watching moving media before sleep found modest and varied effects. The media showed up in 3 to 43 percent of REM dream reports.⁵

Put together: what you hear and experience just before sleep can shape dreams, but the effect is modest and varies from person to person and night to night. Simply intending a theme has weaker support than listening to something as you drift off.

1. 1

   Choose one clear theme

   A place, a person or an image you can picture easily. One theme is easier to hold than three.

2. 2

   Give it a few quiet minutes

   Rest your attention on the theme as you wind down. A calm recording or a voice that describes the scene can help, because the studies above that found an effect used sound at or just before sleep onset.

3. 3

   Let it go as you fall asleep

   Do not hold on to it. You are aiming to fall asleep, not to perform.

4. 4

   Write a few words when you wake

   A short checklist or a few words is enough. In one study, people who wrote a long narrative reported fewer dreams per week, and the authors noted that the time it takes can sap your motivation to keep recording. Keeping a log did not necessarily increase how many dreams people recalled.⁶

Some nights nothing will show up. That is expected, not a sign you did it wrong.