Individuals who frequently experience nightmares report compromised sleep quality, poor daytime mood, and functioning. Previous research has aimed at linking these impairments with altered sleep architecture, but results were inconclusive. One plausible explanation is that only a few studies recorded markers of autonomic nervous system activity. For the first time, this study collected such...
In every culture and nation music has been mentioned as a sort of natural language. While the existence of dreams including music in musicians has been anecdotally reported, music in dreams have been rarely studied empirically. In the present study, 425 participants, mostly psychology students, reported their dreams in a dream diary for 14 days as well as the intensity of their dream emotions...
The diagnosis of a nightmare disorder is based on clinically significant distress caused by the nightmares and, therefore, empirical research should focus on studying factors that affect nightmare distress in addition to nightmare frequency. Overall, 2056 persons (1212 woman, 844 men) completed the online survey. A reliable 6-item scale measuring beliefs about nightmares was developed. The...
A fascinating area of dream research is the analysis of long dream series. However, research regarding differences between long-term journalists and normal persons is lacking. The present online survey (N = 2,492) focused on the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions and frequency of recording dreams. As expected, dream recall frequency, nightmare frequency, and attitude...
Collecting dream reports typically requires waking subjects up from their sleep-a method that has been used to study the relationship between dreams and memory consolidation. However, it is unclear whether these awakenings influence sleep-associated memory consolidation processes. Furthermore, it is unclear how the incorporation of the learning task into dreams is related to memory...
This consensus paper provides an overview of the state of the art in research on the aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder and outlines further perspectives on these issues. It presents a definition of nightmares and nightmare disorder followed by epidemiological findings, and then explains existing models of nightmare aetiology in traumatized and non-traumatized individuals. Chronic...
Background: Nightmares are a widespread phenomenon. In comparison to the general population, they occur in mentally ill and especially in traumatized individuals with an increased frequency. Despite the high prevalence, there is no short questionnaire in the German language that is able to characterize nightmares, to differentiate between different nightmare types and to assess their impact on...
The diagnosis of a nightmare disorder is based on clinically significant distress caused by the nightmares, e.g., sleep or mood disturbances. In order to understand nightmare etiology better empirical research should focus on studying factors that affect nightmare distress in addition to nightmare frequency. Overall, 2492 persons (1437 woman, 1055 men) completed the online survey. Nightmare...
A variety of induction techniques have been proposed to increase lucid dream frequency. An online survey was performed asking about knowledge of lucid dreaming and lucid dream induction techniques. The initial sample size was N=1380 with a subsample of N=716 who were asked questions concerning lucid dream induction techniques. The findings indicate that one quarter of all participants had heard...
Most studies looking into the relationship between lucid dream frequency and personality were based on questionnaire measures of lucid dream frequency. Thus, the aim was to investigate the effect of keeping a dream diary on lucid dream frequency and the correlates of the frequency of lucid dreams in the diary with the Big Five personality factors. The study included 1,612 dreams reported by 425...
The continuity hypothesis states that waking life experiences, e.g., personal concerns and cultural environment, are reflected in dreams. The present study’s goal was to compare written dream reports from Brazilian and German samples. Overall, 97 Brazilian participants were included; two German samples from previous studies (N=89 and N=4197) were selected for comparison. The Brazilian...
Lucid dreams are dreams that involve awareness of dreaming while dreaming. As lucid dreaming is accompanied by heightened cortical activation, e.g., in the prefrontal cortex, it was speculated whether lucid dreaming interferes with the restorative function of sleep. Two cross-sectional studies have found inhomogeneous results regarding the relationship between lucid dream frequency and...
Even though the common diagnostic criteria (ICSD-3, DSM-5) acknowledge that nightmares do not only contain anxiety/fear (definition of the ICD-10) but also other emotions such as grief, disgust, and anger, the definition of a nightmare still focuses on threats to survival, security, or physical integrity. However, empirical studies on nightmare content in larger samples are scarce. The current...
Lucidity is a rare phenomenon, thus different induction techniques are used to increase the frequency of lucid dreaming. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of lucid dream induction (three different cognitive methods: Dream diary, Wake-up-back-to-Bed, and reality testing/reflection) on external rated lucidity, dream length, overall emotional tone, and bizarreness....
In a lucid dream, the dreamer is aware of the dream state and can deliberately practice motor skills. Two field studies indicated that lucid dream practice can improve waking performance in simple motor tasks. The present pilot study investigated the effect of lucid dream practice in a controlled sleep laboratory setting, using a pre-post design with dart throwing in the evening and morning....
The goal of the present study was to analyze the dreams of Arthur Schnitzler and explore the dream content for potential parallels or differences to what is known about his private life in order to test the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. In addition, Freud’s dream content was also analyzed in order to compare Freud’s and Schnitzler’s dreams. One hundred dream reports from Schnitzler and 34...
Chronotype refers to individual differences in sleep timing and in preferences for a given time of day while sleep duration refers to the hours of sleep. Here, we assessed chronotype, sleep duration, and nightmare frequency in relation to the Big Five personality factors. Overall, 2,492 persons (1,437 women, 1,055 men) completed the online survey between March 23, 2015, and April 8, 2015. The...
Lucid dreaming is a rare phenomenon, therefore different induction techniques are used to increase the lucid dream frequency. In the present study three cognitive methods were tested: Dream diary, Wake-up-back-to-Bed, and reality testing/reflection. Altogether, 110 participants completed the three-week study protocol. The present findings showed that although the overall effects were not...
Nightmare frequency in adult ADHD patients has not yet been studied systematically. In a sample of 65 patients, it could be shown that nightmare frequency was elevated in ADHD patients compared to a sample representative for Germany. Frequent nightmares (once a week or more often) were reported by 4.62 % of the patients and 1.77 % of the controls. This increase was neither explained by the...
Visual elements are important ingredients of dreams, so dream objects should be – based on the continuity hypothesis of dreaming – as colorful as the waking world. However, the percentages of recalled colored versus black and white dreams as estimated by the participants varied considerably across studies. In the present online study, 2701 persons completed a question about recalling colors in...
Pregnancy-related dreams are often found in pregnant women but also the number of negatively toned dreams seems to be increased in this challenging phase of a woman's life. Nightmare frequency and subjectively experienced stress was elicited via questionnaires. The mothers-to-be were approached during their application visit about 4-8 weeks prior to delivery in three obstetric hospitals. The...
Although dreams are very private experiences, they are often shared with others. The findings of the present study ( N = 1,375) indicate that sharing dreams is indeed very common and that dream sharing frequency is related to gender (only in adolescents, with girls sharing dreams more often than boys), extraversion, dream recall frequency, and nightmare frequency. Future studies should study...
There have been many recent studies that proofed the continuity hypothesis which suggests that dream content reflects waking life experiences. This study investigated factors that affect the frequency of sport and politics dreams. The online survey (N=2929 German speaking participants) showed a prevalence of about 6% sport dreams and 4% politics dreams. Results indicated that younger and male...
Despite the considerable prevalence of the nightmare disorder and its burden on the patient, nightmares are underdiagnosed and undertreated, even in sleep centers. A total of 1,125 patients in a sleep center undergoing routine diagnostic procedures for their sleep disorders completed a questionnaire about nightmares. About 20% of the sample indicated an interest in more information about...
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....