Nature and Science of Sleep
2025
Serena Scarpelli, Marta Spinoni, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
1 citation
This study investigated dream characteristics in women during the first trimester of pregnancy compared to a group of non-pregnant women, aiming to identify variables associated with the observed differences. A sample of 100 pregnant women in their first trimester was compared to a control group of 100 age-matched non-pregnant women. Participants completed online questionnaires to assess dream...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
August 1, 2024
Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi, Luigi De Gennaro et al.
Changes in sleep and dreams are often observed during pregnancy. Dreaming may represent privileged access to the inner world of individuals, providing relevant information about their well-being. For this reason, a growing but heterogeneous literature has investigated dream experiences of pregnant women. The present paper aimed to systematically review the available evidence on the relationship...
Journal of Sleep Research
June 1, 2023
Elisabetta Fasiello, Serena Scarpelli, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behaviour disorder is a REM sleep parasomnia characterised by the loss of the physiological muscle atonia during REM sleep, resulting in dream enactment behaviours that may cause injuries to patients or their bed partners. The nocturnal motor episodes seem to respond to the dream contents, which are often vivid and violent. These behavioural and oneiric features...
Nature and Science of Sleep
2023
Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi, Milena Camaioni et al.
3 citations
COVID-19 pandemic waves have strongly influenced individuals' behaviors and mental health. Here, we analyzed longitudinal data collected in the Spring 2020 and 2021 from a large Italian sample with the aim of assessing changes in dream features between the first and third wave. Specifically, we evaluated the modifications of pandemic dream activity as a function of the general distress...
Journal of Clinical Medicine
October 28, 2022
Elisabetta Fasiello, Serena Scarpelli, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
Sleep parasomnias have drawn the interest of sleep experts because they represent a valuable window to directly monitor dream activity and sleep mentation associated with nocturnal events. Indeed, parasomnias and their manifestations are helpful in investigating dream activity and features, overcoming methodological limits that affect dream study. Specifically, REM sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD)...
Journal of Sleep Research
April 13, 2022
Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
64 citations
Several studies have tried to identify the neurobiological bases of dream experiences, nevertheless some questions are still at the centre of the debate. Here, we summarise the main open issues concerning the neuroscientific study of dreaming. After overcoming the rapid eye movement (REM) - non-REM (NREM) sleep dichotomy, investigations have focussed on the specific functional or structural...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
March 24, 2022
Maurizio Gorgoni, Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi et al.
7 citations
A growing body of evidence highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic affected oneiric activity. However, only a few studies have assessed the longitudinal changes in dream phenomenology during different phases of the pandemic, often focused on a limited number of dream variables. The aim of the present study was to provide an exhaustive assessment of dream features during total lockdown (TL) and a...
Journal of Sleep Research
February 1, 2022
Serena Scarpelli, Maurizio Gorgoni, Valentina Alfonsi et al.
37 citations
The Coronavirus 2019 pandemic strongly affected our sleep and dream activity. Many cross-sectional studies highlighted increased dream recall frequency, and revealed a great presence of pandemic-related oneiric contents. Here, we present the first prospective study carried out on an Italian sample. One-hundred subjects were requested to fill out a web-survey including socio-demographic...
Brain Sciences
October 20, 2021
Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
23 citations
Recent literature shows that the Coronovirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has provoked significant changes in dreaming. The current study intends to provide an update about dream variable changes during the second wave of COVID-19. A total of 611 participants completed a web survey from December 2020 to January 2021. Statistical comparisons showed that subjects had lower dream-recall frequency,...
Brain Sciences
February 11, 2021
Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
27 citations
Dream research has advanced significantly over the last twenty years, thanks to the new applications of neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques. Many findings pointed out that mental activity during sleep and wakefulness shared similar neural bases. On the other side, recent studies have highlighted that dream experience is promoted by significant brain activation, characterized by...
Frontiers in Psychology
2021
Serena Scarpelli, Valentina Alfonsi, Anita D'Anselmo et al.
18 citations
Some studies highlighted that patients with narcolepsy type-1 (NT1) experience high lucid dream frequency, and this phenomenon has been associated with a creative personality. Starting from the well-known "pandemic effect" on sleep and dreaming, we presented a picture of dream activity in pharmacologically treated NT1 patients during the Italian lockdown. Forty-three NT1 patients completed a...
Brain Sciences
June 3, 2020
Serena Scarpelli, Aurora D'Atri, Chiara Bartolacci et al.
Several findings support the activation hypothesis, positing that cortical arousal promotes dream recall (DR). However, most studies have been carried out on young participants, while the electrophysiological (EEG) correlates of DR in older people are still mostly unknown. We aimed to test the activation hypothesis on 20 elders, focusing on the Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep stage. All the...
Nature and Science of Sleep
2020
Serena Scarpelli, Chiara Bartolacci, Aurora D'Atri et al.
In the current study, we aimed to investigate the EEG correlates of dream recall (DR) monitoring both the homeostatic and state-trait like factors. We assessed the influence of the time of night on the EEG correlates of DR from REM sleep. Specifically, we tested the continuity-hypothesis (on the theta EEG band) and the activation-hypothesis (on the delta and beta bands). Twenty-seven subjects...
Handbook of Sleep Research
2019
Serena Scarpelli, Maurizio Gorgoni, A. D’Atri et al.
Abstract Once questioned the assumption that dreaming depends on REM sleep, subsequent studies focused on the neural correlates of dream recall (DR). Considering the indirect access to the sleep mentation, this chapter reviews the main neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological findings on DR. Compelling evidence supports the idea that shared mechanisms between sleep and...
Frontiers in Neurology
2019
Serena Scarpelli, Aurora D'Atri, Chiara Bartolacci et al.
Several findings underlined that the electrophysiological (EEG) background of the last segment of sleep before awakenings may predict the presence/absence of dream recall (DR) in young subjects. However, little is known about the EEG correlates of DR in elderly people. Only an investigation found differences between recall and non-recall conditions during NREM sleep EEG in older adults,...
Frontiers in Psychology
2019
Serena Scarpelli, Chiara Bartolacci, Aurora D'Atri et al.
Dream experience (DE) represents a fascinating condition linked to emotional processes and the human inner world. Although the overlap between REM sleep and dreaming has been overcome, several studies point out that emotional and perceptually vivid contents are more frequent when reported upon awakenings from this sleep stage. Actually, it is well-known that REM sleep plays a pivotal role in...
Behavioral and brain functions : BBF
December 26, 2018
Cinzia Schiappa, Serena Scarpelli, Aurora D'Atri et al.
Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations, and sleep paralysis. This disease affects significantly the overall patient functioning, interfering with social, work, and affective life. Some symptoms of narcolepsy depend on emotional stimuli; for instance, cataplectic attacks can be triggered by emotional inputs such...
Brain Topography
September 1, 2017
Serena Scarpelli, Aurora D'Atri, Anastasia Mangiaruga et al.
The common knowledge of a uniqueness of REM sleep as a privileged scenario of dreaming still persists, although consolidated empirical evidence shows that the assumption that dreaming is just an epiphenomenon of REM sleep is no longer tenable. However, the brain mechanisms underlying dream generation and its encoding in memory during NREM sleep are still mostly unknown. In fact, only few...
Frontiers in Psychology
2015
Serena Scarpelli, Aurora D'Atri, Maurizio Gorgoni et al.
Dreaming represents a peculiar form of cognitive activity during sleep. On the basis of the well-known relationship between sleep and memory, there has been a growing interest in the predictive role of human brain activity during sleep on dream recall. Neuroimaging studies indicate that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is characterized by limbic activation and prefrontal cortex deactivation. This...
Frontiers in Psychology
2015
Serena Scarpelli, Cristina Marzano, Aurora D'Atri et al.
We examined the question whether the role of EEG oscillations in predicting presence/absence of dream recall (DR) is explained by "state-" or "trait-like" factors. Six healthy subjects were awakened from REM sleep in a within-subjects design with multiple naps, until a recall and a non-recall condition were obtained. Naps were scheduled in the early afternoon and were separated by 1 week....
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
May 4, 2011
Cristina Marzano, Michele Ferrara, Federica Mauro et al.
Under the assumption that dream recall is a peculiar form of declarative memory, we have hypothesized that (1) the encoding of dream contents during sleep should share some electrophysiological mechanisms with the encoding of episodic memories of the awake brain and (2) recalling a dream(s) after awakening from non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep should be...