You can dream while you're awake. The boundary between wakefulness and sleep is a lot blurrier than you'd think

MedicalXpress | 七月 03, 2026

Tonight, as you close your eyes in bed, something strange will happen to you: Your mind will drift from an ordinary thought to a dream, but it will be impossible to say exactly when it happened. We tend to imagine that the boundary between being asleep and awake is clear: When we are awake, we think; when we are asleep, we dream. Yet, in our study, published in Cell Reports, we show that this boundary is more porous than you think. You can dream before falling asleep and plan your day ahead after drifting off.