The German term Nervenreiztraum translates loosely as 'nerve-impulse dream'. It was coined in or shortly before 1882 by the German philosopher Heinrich Spitta (1849-1929) to denote a * dream, the content of which is attributable to external perceptual stimuli such as the sound of a door slamming, the sound of rainfall, or the feeling of a cat jumping onto the bed. Because of the indebtedness of the Nervenreiztraum to such external stimuli, Spitta places this sleep-related phenomenon conceptually on a par with * illusions.
References
Spitta, H (1882). Die Schlaf- und Traum-zustände der menschlichen Seele. Freiburg i.B: Mohr.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.