Dreams are not merely a random byproduct of sleep, but an important part of cognitive functioning that can reveal deeper layers of our consciousness.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Maja Gutman Mušič, a lecturer at the ISH Faculty of Alma Mater Europaea University and a research associate at ZRS Koper, studies the most extensive collection of dreams in the Western world. Contemporary research shows that dreaming actively participates in processing information, emotions, and memories, and enables access to contents that often go unnoticed in the waking state.
As Dr. Gutman Mušič emphasizes, dreams open up a specific mode of perception and thinking that transcends the logic of waking consciousness. It is precisely in this space that patterns, connections, and meanings can be revealed—ones that are harder to recognize in everyday life.
Research in this field increasingly suggests that the boundary between wakefulness and dreaming is not strictly separated. On the contrary, dreams can be understood as part of a continuum of consciousness, where neurophysiological processes, subjective experiences, and cultural meanings intertwine.
Such a view places dreams at the center of interdisciplinary consciousness research and opens up new questions about how we understand our own experience of reality.
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Dr. Maja Gutman Mušič is an interdisciplinary researcher at the intersection of anthropology, philosophy of mind, media studies, and science and technology studies. She earned her PhD at AMEU ISH (2016) and received a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA in 2021. Her digital monograph 2020 Dreams (Stanford University Press, 2023) explores the impact of media-mediated realities on human dreams. She has presented her research at more than 40 international conferences, including The Science of Consciousness and MIT Dream x Engineering.
