People with Wilson's disease who also have rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) report more nightmares and dreams with violent or aggressive content than those without RBD, and their dream reports contain more negative emotions and aggression. Patients with Wilson's disease overall have shorter dream reports than healthy controls, which may reflect cognitive deficits. The lack of major differences in dream content between Wilson's disease patients and controls might be due to successful treatment. Violent, aggressive dream content appears characteristic of RBD in Wilson's disease as in other populations.
Dreams reflect waking-life experiences, including personal concerns and cultural environment. Comparing written dream reports from Brazilian and German samples revealed both cultural differences and universal similarities. German dream reports contained more bizarreness, aggression, problems, and extreme emotions, while Brazilian reports featured more depression-related topics and work- and leisure-related themes. Similarities included verbal and physical interaction, numbers of male and female characters, and death-related themes, suggesting universal dream characteristics. The differences are interpreted as reflecting core cultural patterns: for Brazil, themes of miscegenation, emotional culture, and saudade (longing); for Germany, a conflict between high performance in science and arts and twentieth-century history.