One can experience many days in a dream while no physical time elapses, as if traveling in the blink of an eye.

Additional Question 1: Recruit approximately 120 frequent dreamers across multiple centers, each participating for four to six nights, with randomized awakenings at predefined intervals of two, five, or ten minutes after REM onset. Immediately ask separately about the duration of continuous experience, the time span covered by the story, and confidence. A lucid-dreaming subsample would mark the beginning and end using eye movements and receive timestamped stimuli. Define R = subjective continuous duration / externally marked interval; the entire REM period cannot be treated directly as dream duration. Approximately 60 participants would attempt simultaneous EEG-fMRI, with pre-registered analyses of amygdala BOLD and prefrontal connectivity, over 18–24 months. Additional Question 5 would use a separate VR experiment involving approximately 240 participants, orthogonally manipulating scene flow rate and event density, with a matched two-dimensional display group and prospective and retrospective timing groups. Record blink rate, skin conductance, and immediate and 24-hour memory, over 9–12 months. This tests attention and encoding mechanisms, not dreams directly.

Subjective Duration During REM Dreaming: A Pre-registered Study Using Real-Time Signals and Serial Awakenings

Reliable confirmation of continuous information processing within zero physical duration would challenge the assumption that “conscious events depend on neural dynamics with nonzero duration.”

Daniel Erlacher，University of Bern; Ken A. Paller，Northwestern University; Delphine Oudiette，Paris Brain Institute; Martin Dresler，Donders Institute; Nicolas Davidenko，University of California, Santa Cruz

The strict claim that “no physical time elapses” makes a strong prediction that conflicts with known timing results; if it merely means that “the story feels as though it spans several days,” it is insufficient to distinguish continuous experience, narrative jumps, and memory construction after awakening.

contradicted applies to the literal mechanism involving zero physical time; this does not negate experiences of stories spanning several days, while extreme expansion of continuous experienced duration still lacks direct evidence. Scalp EEG alone cannot measure amygdala activation, and neither blink rate nor skin conductance is a specific indicator of memory encoding strength.