People with REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) often report violent dreams, but this study found no difference in the frequency of threatening dream content among drug-naïve RBD patients, those treated with clonazepam, and healthy controls. Over three weeks, 214 dream reports were collected from 13 treated patients, 11 drug-naïve patients, and 12 controls. Threatening content did not differ significantly between groups. However, aggressiveness was more frequent in dreams accompanied by dream enactment behaviors, regardless of clonazepam treatment. Friendliness scores were higher in RBD patients than controls. The findings suggest that motor disinhibition during RBD may require emotionally intense dreams, and clonazepam does not alter dream content.
The continuity between dreaming and waking consciousness remains unclear. In this study, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and healthy controls provided waking fantasy narratives using a shortened Thematic Apperception Test and kept dream diaries. Analysis of obsessive and compulsive themes in both dream and waking reports showed no differences between the two groups in the density of these themes. However, for both groups, obsessive and compulsive themes were significantly more frequent in dream reports than in waking narratives. Among OCD patients, dream obsession and compulsion scores did not correlate with their Y-BOCS symptom scores. These results support the discontinuity hypothesis, suggesting that ruminative thought patterns are interrupted during dreaming.
In acutely psychotic patients with a single fixed delusion, fragments of that delusional thought appear in their dreams, suggesting continuity between waking delusions and dream content. Ten patients reported dreams during an acute psychotic break. Sixteen judges, with varying familiarity with each patient's delusion, tried to group the dreams by matching them to the correct patient. Most judges performed only slightly above chance, and no significant differences emerged between groups with different levels of acquaintance. Scoring dreams for specific delusional themes revealed continuity for Grandiosity and Religion. The findings indicate that some delusional contents recur within patients' dreams, possibly reflecting ongoing memory consolidation processes relevant to delusion formation.