Worsening adolescent mental health is a significant social issue. Although dreams may reflect one's mental state, few studies have focused on adolescents. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between dream content and mental health, specifically anxiety disorder and depressive symptoms, among Japanese adolescents. This cross-sectional study obtained data on gender, grade, age,...
During the COVID-19 lockdown, a distortion of time passage has been widely reported in association with a change in daily rhythm. However, several variables related to these changes have not been considered. The purpose of the present study was to assess the changes in dispositional mindfulness, time experience, sleep timing and subjective memory functioning. A longitudinal study was conducted...
Sleep-related metacognitions play a role in the etiology of insomnia and are distressing while falling asleep. Although similar concepts, such as thought suppression, have been studied in the context of dreaming, the relationship between sleep-related metacognitions and more negatively toned dreaming due to stressful pre-sleep experiences has yet to be studied. Overall, 919 patients with...
Lucid dreaming offers the chance to investigate dreams from within a dream and by real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. This state of consciousness opens a new experimental venue for dream research. However, laboratory study in this field is limited due to the rarity of lucid dreamers. In a previous study, we were able to induce in 50% of the participants a...
Growing evidence indicates an association between reduced dream recall and depressive symptomatology. Here, we tested the prediction that reduced dream recall in individuals experiencing major depressive disorder (MDD) is due to alterations in circadian and sleep processes. Nine young healthy women (20−31 years) and eight young unmedicated women (20−31 years) diagnosed with MDD underwent a 40 h...
The effect of cortisol on dreams has been scarcely studied. The aim of this exploratory study was to assess the possible effect of cortisol levels on dream recall/affect, considering, in female subjects, their menstrual cycle phase. Fifteen men and fifteen women were recruited. Saliva samples were used for the detection of cortisol levels. Participants were instructed to provide four saliva...
Many dream content analytic studies focus on dream characters, animals, social interactions and so on, but they rarely analyze the frequency of everyday objects in dreams. In the present paper, the frequency and phenomenology of clock dreams in a dream series of 12,476 dreams of a single male dreamer was analyzed. The clock dreams (0.74% of all dreams) show a variety of contexts not only...
The study of dreams represents a crucial intersection between philosophical, psychological, neuroscientific, and clinical interests. Importantly, one of the main sources of insight into dreaming activity are the (oral or written) reports provided by dreamers upon awakening from their sleep. Classically, two main types of information are commonly extracted from dream reports: structural and...
Clocks & SleepSeptember 16, 2021Rabya Mughal, Siu Sing Wong, Dagmara Dimitriou et al.8 citations
Children with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) experience significantly higher rates of sleep disturbances than their typically developing (TD) peers. Pre-sleep anxiety and waking emotional content is known to affect the content and frequency of nightmares, which can be distressing to children and caregivers. This is the first study to analyse...
In this concise review, we present an overview of research on dream recall/affect and of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, discussing caveats regarding the action of hormones of the HPA axis (mainly cortisol and its free form, cortisol-binding globulin and glucocorticoid receptors). We present results of studies regarding dream recall/affect and the HPA axis under physiological...
Romantic relationships are an important part of human life and thus, according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, one's romantic partner should show up in dreams quite frequently. The present study is based on 1612 dream reports provided by 425 students. The findings confirmed the hypothesis that partner dreams are more frequent than ex-partner dreams and, thus, support the continuity...
Chronotype refers to individual differences in sleep timing ("owls" and "larks") and "eveningness" has been associated with nightmares. However, it has not been tested as to whether neuroticism mediates this relationship. Urbanicity refers to being raised in an urban region and/or currently living in an urban region and is associated with heightened risk for developing mental disorders, and...
Professional work is an integral part of modern life. According to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, which states that dreams reflect waking life, work-related dreams should be quite common. As most dream content analytic studies are carried out in student samples, the topic of work in dreams is understudied. A few small studies indicate that the stress levels associated with the job are...
REM periods with lucid dreaming show increased brain activation, especially in the prefrontal cortex, compared to REM periods without lucid dreaming and, thus, the question of whether lucid dreaming interferes with the recovery function of sleep arises. Cross-sectional studies found a negative relationship between sleep quality and lucid dreaming frequency, but this relationship was explained...