Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
February 18, 2010
Antonio Zadra, Robert O. Pihl
120 citations
Lucid dreaming, where a person becomes aware they are dreaming while still asleep, can help treat recurrent nightmares. In five cases, treatments combining relaxation, guided imagery, and lucid dream induction, or induction alone, eliminated nightmares in four people and reduced their intensity and frequency in the fifth over a one-year follow-up. These results align with earlier reports and suggest that training in lucid dreaming has therapeutic value, though it remains unclear whether the benefit comes from lucidity itself or the ability to change the dream.
Brain Sciences
June 29, 2024
Ajar Diushekeeva, Santiago Hidalgo, Antonio Zadra
4 citations
A scoping review of 29 experimental studies found modest and varied effects of watching visual media before sleep on dream content. The rate at which media elements appeared in dreams ranged from 3% to 43% for REM sleep dream reports, 4% to 30% for NREM sleep mentation reports, and 11% to 35% for home dream reports. The review highlights large methodological differences across studies and the general difficulty of influencing dream content through pre-sleep media exposure, while suggesting promising directions for future research into how digital media may affect dreams.
Scientific Reports
October 14, 2019
Eugénie Samson-Daoust, Sarah-Hélène Julien, Dominic Beaulieu-Prévost et al.
Emotions are common in dreams, but what causes them to vary from night to night and person to person is not well understood. This study tracked adults from the general population, measuring their personality and trauma history, then having them keep a three-week daily journal of dream recall, the emotional tone of their dreams, and their stress levels during the day and before sleep. Most of the differences in dream emotional valence were explained by within-person factors (night-to-night variations). Trait anxiety was the only factor that predicted dream emotions between people. The findings highlight the need for more precise measures and suggest that state variables, rather than stable traits, may best explain why dream emotions fluctuate.
Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2015
Aline Gauchat, Jean R Séguin, Esther McSween-Cadieux et al.
Recurrent dreams in young adolescents aged 11–15 years most often involve confrontations with monsters or animals, physical aggression, falling, and being chased. Analysis of 102 dream reports shows these dreams contain more negative than positive content. Only half include threatening elements, providing mixed support for the threat simulation theory of dreaming. Differences between adolescent and adult recurrent dreams are discussed, along with possible sex effects.
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
September 1, 2013
Mylène Duval, Pierre McDuff, Antonio Zadra
Among 352 female undergraduates, those who experienced more severe childhood maltreatment reported more frequent disturbing dreams, higher nightmare distress, and greater psychopathology. Nightmare distress predicted disturbed dreaming frequency beyond the effects of psychopathology and childhood trauma. The findings underscore the need to assess the waking distress linked to disturbing dreams separately from how often they occur.
Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2012
Antonio Zadra, Geneviève Robert
People differ widely in how often they recall dreams, and part of that variation may come from how recall is measured. In a study of 358 participants who estimated their weekly dream recall and then kept either a narrative log (165 people) or a checklist log (193 people) for 2–5 weeks, dream recall frequency peaked early in the first week for both log types and then stayed stable. The two groups did not differ in their estimated recall, but narrative logs produced significantly fewer reported dreams per week. Only checklist logs yielded significantly higher recall than participants' initial questionnaire estimates. The pattern held across people with low, medium, or high baseline recall.
Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2010
Félix-Antoine Lusignan, Roger Godbout, Marie-Josée Dubuc et al.
Dream recall frequency after NonREM and REM sleep awakenings was similar for patients with schizophrenia and controls, matching values for healthy participants. Patients' NonREM sleep narratives were shorter than controls'. Both groups' NonREM reports had fewer words and reportable items compared to their REM reports. Controls more often reported bizarreness in REM than NonREM reports, a difference not seen in patients. Overall, NonREM sleep mentation differed little between groups, and sleep stage cognitive style was comparable, with NonREM reports being more thought-like, less elaborate, and less bizarre than REM reports.
Schizophrenia Research
July 1, 2009
Félix-Antoine Lusignan, Antonio Zadra, Marie-Josée Dubuc et al.
People with schizophrenia report more nightmares than healthy controls, but their overall dream recall, recurrent dreams, and emotional frequency are similar. When dreams are collected in a sleep laboratory, patients' narratives are shorter; after adjusting for length, most content differences disappear except for a higher proportion of unknown characters. Patients rate their own dreams as less bizarre than controls do, even though external judges see similar bizarreness. Eye movement density during REM sleep is comparable between groups, but a link between eye movements and dream content appears only in controls. These patterns suggest that dream content in schizophrenia may reflect disorder-specific neurocognitive processes, particularly emotional processing.
Behavioral Sleep Medicine
January 1, 2006
Barry Krakow, Antonio Zadra
Chronic nightmares affect 5% to 8% of the general population and many trauma survivors. They may be a primary sleep disorder rather than just a symptom of psychiatric illness, so directly treating nightmares is a feasible approach. Imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) has the strongest empirical support. This cognitive-imagery treatment is delivered over four roughly two-hour sessions. The article presents the main points and rationale for each session and suggests dismantling protocols to identify active ingredients of IRT, enabling flexible applications tailored to patients' needs.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
June 1, 1998
Antonio Zadra, Shannon A. O'Brien, D. C. Donderi
Recurrent dreamers aged 18 to 21 scored lower on psychological well-being and reported more negative dream content compared to past-recurrent and nonrecurrent dreamers. A single psychometric dimension, psychological well-being, distinguished recurrent dreamers from the other groups across all well-being and dream content measures. Dream archetypality was negatively correlated with neuroticism, matching two prior studies. The findings suggest that recurrent dreams occur during stressful periods, involve negative content, and are linked to reduced psychological well-being.