Dreams and nightmares in healthy adults and in patients with sleep and neurological disorders.
Lancet Neurology October 1, 2020 F. Siclari, Katja Valli, I. Arnulf
Dreaming is now linked to specific brain activity patterns thanks to advances in neuroimaging. Neurological conditions such as lucid dreams and parasomnias reveal that dreaming is reflected in physiological signals, behaviors, and brain activity, with the body sometimes enacting dream content. However, the dream body can differ from the real body: patients with congenital paraplegia can walk in dreams, those with sleep apnoea rarely suffocate, and phantom limb pain can disappear. These conditions offer valuable models for studying the mechanisms underlying dream experiences.