NREM sleep spindles are associated with dream recall
March 1, 2017 T. Nielsen, M. Carr, C. Blanchette-Carrière et al.
Fast sleep spindle density during NREM sleep is positively correlated with dream recall, especially bad dreams and the length of REM dream reports. In 53 healthy adults, fast spindles were most robustly linked to bad dream recall and the number of words in REM dream narratives. The associations varied by sleep cycle: bad dream recall correlated with spindles in cycles 2 and 3, while word count correlated with cycles 1, 4, and 5. Slow spindle density showed an opposite pattern of correlations.