Current Psychiatry Reports
February 1, 2016
Michael Schredl
Although the relationship between dreaming and psychopathology has been studied quite extensively, research on dreaming in patients with personality disorders has been very scarce. In patients with borderline personality disorder, negatively toned dreams and heightened nightmare frequency have been found-characteristics not determined by co-morbid depression or posttraumatic stress disorder....
Behavioural Neurology
2016
Gotthard G. Tribl, Mateus C. Trindade, Michael Schredl et al.
8 citations
Objective. Violent dream content and its acting out during rapid eye movement sleep are considered distinctive for rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD). This study reports first quantitative data on dreaming in a cohort of patients with treated Wilson's disease (WD) and in patients with WD with RBD. Methods. Retrospective questionnaires on different dimensions of dreaming and a...
ORCA Online Research @Cardiff
2016
Michael Schredl, Josie Henley, Mark Blagrove
7 citations
Research that has focused on the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions and lucid dreaming frequency has been restricted to student samples. The present study included adolescents and adults (N = 1375). i.e., the sample included a large range of ages. Lucid dreaming was more strongly related to openness to experiences compared to previous findings. The small but significant...
Sleep
April 30, 2015
Michael Rak, P. Beitinger, Axel Steiger et al.
56 citations
STUDY OBJECTIVE: Nightmares are a frequent symptom in narcolepsy. Lucid dreaming, i.e., the phenomenon of becoming aware of the dreaming state during dreaming, has been demonstrated to be of therapeutic value for recurrent nightmares. Data on lucid dreaming in narcolepsy patients, however, is sparse. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of recalled dreams (DF), nightmares (NF),...
Journal of Sports Sciences
April 7, 2015
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl
60 citations
Motor practice in lucid dreams is a form of mental rehearsal where the dreamer can consciously rehearse motor skills in the dream state while being physically asleep. A previous pilot study showed that practice in lucid dreams can improve subsequent performance. This study aimed to replicate those findings with a different task (finger-tapping) and compare the effectiveness of lucid dream...
University Library Heidelberg
2015
Mariella Zunker, Hanna Katharina Althoff, Julia Apel et al.
21 citations
Studies investigating the prevalence of nightmares have generally found higher frequencies in studies using daily logbooks or diaries compared to retrospective reports, raising the question as to whether retrospective questionnaires lead to an underestimation of nightmare frequency, possibly due to the suppression of the frightening nightmare experience or if the diary enhances recall. In this...
PLoS One
2015
Robin Bekrater-Bodmann, Michael Schredl, Martin Diers et al.
The experience of post-amputation pain such as phantom limb pain (PLP) and residual limb pain (RLP), is a common consequence of limb amputation, and its presence has negative effects on a person's well-being. The continuity hypothesis of dreams suggests that the presence of such aversive experiences in the waking state should be reflected in dream content, with the recalled body representation...
The American Journal of Psychology
April 21, 2014
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Miriam Johnson et al.
104 citations
In lucid dreams the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. Although such dreams are not that uncommon, many aspects of lucid dream phenomenology are still unclear. An online survey was conducted to gather data about lucid dream origination, duration, active or passive participation in the dream, planned actions for lucid dreams, and other phenomenological aspects. Among the 684...
Frontiers in Psychology
2014
Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich, Tadas Stumbrys et al.
48 citations
The relationship between time in dreams and real time has intrigued scientists for centuries. The question if actions in dreams take the same time as in wakefulness can be tested by using lucid dreams where the dreamer is able to mark time intervals with prearranged eye movements that can be objectively identified in EOG recordings. Previous research showed an equivalence of time for counting...
University Library Heidelberg
2014
Joacim F. Skancke, Ingrid Holsen, Michael Schredl
24 citations
Despite positive results from the use of dreams in psychotherapy and for personal growth, research regarding the relationship between waking life and dreams of patients with mental disorders is relatively scarce. The present paper reviews the existing literature on dreams of psychiatric patients in order to identify the continuities and discontinuities between the dreams and the waking life...
University Library Heidelberg
2014
Simon Kern, Amelie Auer, Melanie Gutsche et al.
15 citations
There have been many studies which show that waking life is mirrored in dream content. In a previous study, the relation between time spent on sports related tasks and sport dreams has been shown where that sports students dream more often of sports than psychology students. In this study the aim was to test whether this trend is also true for students of politics and if the time spent in...
Laterality
2014
Michael Schredl, Alan A Beaton, Josie Henley-Einion et al.
The ability to recall a dream upon waking up in the morning has been linked to a broad variety of factors such as personality, creativity, sleep behaviour and cognitive function. There have been conflicting findings as to whether dream recall is related more to the right or to the left hemisphere, and conflicting findings regarding the relationship of dream-recall frequency to handedness. We...
The American Journal of Psychology
2014
Michael Schredl
A recent meta-analysis showed a robust gender difference in nightmare frequency of medium effect size in adolescents and young adults: Women tend to report nightmares more frequently than men. The present study, carried out in an unselected student sample, indicates that 2 factors mediate the gender difference in nightmare frequency: neuroticism and overall dream recall frequency. The effect of...
The European Journal of Psychiatry
December 1, 2013
Michael Schredl
19 citations
Background and Objectives: Nightmares are defined as disturbing mental experiences that generally occur during REM sleep and often result in awakening. Even though about 5% of the general population suffers from nightmares, little is known about seeking professional help in this patient group.
The Behavioral and brain sciences
December 1, 2013
Michael Schredl
The hypothesis that dreaming is involved in off-line memory processing is difficult to test because major methodological issues have to be addressed, such as dream recall and the effect of remembered dreams on memory. It would be fruitful--in addition to studying the ancient art of memory (AAOM) in a scanner--to study the dreams of persons who use AAOM regularly.
PPmP - Psychotherapie · Psychosomatik · Medizinische Psychologie
October 18, 2013
Michael Schredl, Anja S. Göritz
18 citations
The present study elicited a variety of coping strategies for nightmares in the general population and asked whether these coping strategies were helpful. A large-scale online survey (N=2 872, mean age: 43 years) was carried out. About 11.5% of the participants reported nightmares once a week or more often. The results indicate that sharing of nightmares was the most prevalent coping strategy,...
October 16, 2013
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl
Lucid dream and nightmare frequencies vary greatly between individuals and to assess these differences reliable instruments are needed. The present study aimed to examine the reliability of eight-point scales for measuring lucid dream and nightmare frequencies. The scales were administered twice (with a four-week interval) to 93 sport students. A re-test reliability for the lucid dream...
Dreaming
September 9, 2013
Michael Rohde Olsen, Michael Schredl, Ingegerd Carlsson
19 citations
The study investigated aspects of dream sharing and dream recall in an adult sample (N = 667). It explored with whom dreams are shared and why, as well as the relation between relationship intimacy and dream sharing frequency with the partner. A significant, positive correlation was found between dream sharing frequency in couples and perceived relationship intimacy. Further, the findings...
Consciousness and Cognition
September 8, 2013
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl
88 citations
Recent studies suggest that lucid dreaming (awareness of dreaming while dreaming) might be associated with increased brain activity over frontal regions during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. By applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we aimed to manipulate the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during REM sleep to increase dream lucidity. Nineteen...
Journal of Sleep Research
May 16, 2013
Tana Kröner-Borowik, Stefanie Gosch, Kathrin Hansen et al.
26 citations
Suppressing unwanted thoughts can lead to an increased occurrence of the suppressed thought in dreams. This is explainable by the ironic control theory, which theorizes why the suppression of thoughts might make them more persistent. The present study examined the influence of thought suppression on dream rebound, dream distress, general psychiatric symptomatology, depression, sleep quality and...
Sleep Medicine Reviews
April 1, 2013
Gotthard G. Tribl, Thomas C. Wetter, Michael Schredl
Sleep related symptoms of depression include sleep fragmentation, early morning awakening, decreased rapid eye movement (REM) sleep latency, increased REM density, and more negative dream content. Most tricyclic antidepressants (ADs) increase total sleep time and decrease wake time after sleep onset, while many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have an opposite effect. However,...
International Journal of Adolescence and Youth
February 27, 2013
Michael Schredl, Angela Buscher, Cornelia Haaß et al.
16 citations
Dream socialisation encompasses factors that might affect children's attitudes towards dreams or their dream recall frequencies directly; for example, by being asked about dreams by other persons or the sharing of dreams with others. The present study in 170 children/adolescents (age range 10–15 years) was designed to study whether dream socialisation might help to explain the well-documented...
University Library Heidelberg
2013
Michael Schredl
44 citations
Nightmares are defined as dreams with strong negative emotions that result in awakening. Overall, the findings of the present representative survey (N = 915) indicate that nightmare frequency decrease with age and living in urban areas are associated with heightened nightmare frequency. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify how age affects nightmare frequency because the findings of...
Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2012
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich et al.
In lucid dreams the dreamer is aware of dreaming and often able to influence the ongoing dream content. Lucid dreaming is a learnable skill and a variety of techniques is suggested for lucid dreaming induction. This systematic review evaluated the evidence for the effectiveness of induction techniques. A comprehensive literature search was carried out in biomedical databases and specific...
Imagination Cognition and Personality
February 21, 2012
Daniel Erlacher, Tadas Stumbrys, Michael Schredl
36 citations
Mental practice is the cognitive rehearsal of a motor task in the absence of overt physical movement. A different and rather unknown kind of mental rehearsal is practice in lucid dreams. Within lucid dreams, the dreamer is able to control the ongoing dream content and for athletes it is possible to use the dream state to deliberately practice sport skills while physically asleep. In this study,...