Can you control your dreams?
Postdoctoral Associate, Dept of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center
Michelle Carr, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Associate in Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, working in the Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory where she studies the neurocognitive science of sleep, dreams and mental health. She previously completed postdoctoral training at the Swansea University Sleep Laboratory studying the neurophysiology of nightmares, and lucid dream induction and phenomenology. Michelle received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Montreal in 2016, conducting research with Dr. Tore Nielsen at the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory. Her current research is focused on the structure and functions of dreaming, nightmares and other dream disturbances, and dream engineering—new techniques and technologies designed to influence dreams to benefit mental health and wellbeing. She led the organization of the 1st International Dream Engineering Workshop hosted at the MIT Media Laboratory in January 2019 and served as Managing Guest Editor for a Special Issue of Consciousness and Cognition on the same topic. Michelle is also current Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and translates dream research to the public by writing for Psychology Today.