Abstract Dysfunction in default mode network (DMN) connectivity plays a role in the etiology and maintenance of insomnia symptoms. Negative self-referential thinking is a perpetuating factor of insomnia that has been linked with DMN connectivity. The Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis (BNST), part of the extended-amygdala pathway, facilitates cognitive and physiological hyperarousal. We...
Abstract Sleep and dreaming have long been hypothesized to serve a functional role in emotion regulation. Here, we investigated how reactivating highly emotional autobiographical memories prior to sleep affects dream content and subsequent emotional appraisal of these memories. Participants (N = 42) completed the Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT) prior to bed for three consecutive...
Abstract Study Objectives Sensory stimulation during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has been proposed as a method to induce lucidity, yet most approaches rely on distal sensory modalities such as light and sound. We explored whether bodily stimulation targeting the muscle and vestibular systems differentially influences dream incorporation and lucid awareness during REM sleep. Methods 28...
For the last few decades, Dr. Robert “Bob” Stickgold has led the way in reshaping our understanding of sleep through his influential studies and theoretical frameworks. His work has established sleep as an active component of memory consolidation, in which reactivation and dreaming foster the selective stabilization, abstraction, and integration of waking experiences, optimizing our cognitive...
Insomnia is common in pregnancy and is associated with maladaptive sleep behaviors and poor emotion regulation. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI) and Perinatal Understanding of Mindful Awareness for Sleep (PUMAS) are effective interventions for alleviating prenatal insomnia. However, clinical benefits outside the primary target of sleep remain unclear. This randomized controlled...
Abstract This preliminary study investigates the potential for a technique that enables purposeful guiding of dream content (Targeted Dream Incubation; TDI) to change the degree to which an individual feels in control of their dreams (Dream Self-Efficacy; DSE). DSE is a subset of a larger concept of self-efficacy relating to one’s belief in their own abilities and competencies. Examining DSE...
Study Objectives: Trauma nightmares are a core feature of PTSD, with potentially devastating implications for mental health outcomes. Treatments remain unsatisfactory and nightmares are poorly understood, both biologically and phenomenologically; measurement methods are limited. The aims of the current analyses were to (1) characterize distressing dreams in trauma survivors, (2) examine the...
Abstract People frequently dream of recent experiences, which may reflect the consolidation of memories in the sleeping brain. Many studies demonstrate that experimentally introducing new learning prior to sleep can induce dreams of recently encoded memories. Here, for the first time, we tested whether activating a remote memory just before sleep can similarly induce participants to dream about...
SLEEP Advances2025Luis Alfredo Moctezuma, Marta Molinas, Takashi Abe1 citation
Abstract This study proposes a method to automatically identify dream experience (DE) and no experience (NE) during the sleep stage N2 of nonrapid eye movement (NREM). We investigated the use of machine learning (ML) to automatically identify when a subject is having a dream during NREM from electroencephalography (EEG) signals. We use permutation-based channel selection to identify the most...
A central tenet of Freudian dream theory holds that there is thematic coherence within all dreams, even those containing scene and plot discontinuities. While other models support varying degrees of dream coherence, none address the question of how, or even whether, coherence can be identified in dreams with such discontinuities. Here, we objectively test the ability of judges to evaluate the...
Abstract Introduction REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is strongly associated with neurodegenerative disease (NDD), and the isolated form is a known prodrome of several alpha-synuclein-related NDD’s. RBD is difficult to diagnose, and screening questionnaires focus on vivid and aggressive dream content, but these characteristics may be more common to males, leading to underdiagnosis of RBD in...
Abstract Introduction In recent years, death anxiety has been identified as a transdiagnostic risk factor for many mental health conditions and potentially for disturbing sleep and nightmares. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to identify the prevalence and predictors of death anxiety and examine its relationship to disturbing dreams and nightmares in Australian adults. Methods...
Abstract Introduction Dream content analysis is not a routine part of a clinical sleep assessment. However, dreams are an important part of the sleep experience and may provide insights into other health domains. This study investigated the relationship between descriptions of dream content and psychological distress. Methods The study cohort consisted of 217 participants (149 female, age...
Robert Stickgold's research was among the earliest to rigorously quantify the effect of learning on dream content. As a result, we learned that dreaming is influenced by the activation of newly formed memory traces in the sleeping brain. Exactly how this happens is an ongoing area of investigation. Here, we test the hypothesis that participants are especially likely to dream of recent...
SLEEP Advances2024Christopher M. McGrory, Augustus Kram Mendelsohn, Suzanne L. Pineles et al.2 citations
Study Objectives: Trauma-related nightmares (TRNs) are a hallmark symptom of PTSD and are highly correlated with PTSD severity and poor sleep quality. Given the salience and arousal associated with TRNs, they might be an effective target for imaginal exposures during Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy. As a first step in this line of research, the current study compared participants' emotional...
SLEEP Advances2024Julia Fechner, Maren Born, Massimiliano Mancini et al.1 citation
Abstract Study Objectives The “Zeigarnik effect” refers to the phenomenon where future intentions are remembered effectively only as long as they are not executed. This study investigates whether these intentions, which remain active during sleep, influence dream content. Methods After an adaptation night, each of the 19 participants (10 women and 9 men) received three different task plans in...
Combining mindfulness with behavioral sleep strategies has been found to alleviate symptoms of insomnia and depression during pregnancy, but mechanisms for this treatment approach remain unclear. The present study examined nocturnal cognitive arousal and sleep effort as potential treatment mechanisms for alleviating insomnia and depression via a mindfulness sleep program for pregnant women....
SLEEP AdvancesSeptember 10, 2022Kenneth A Taylor, Skai W Schwartz, Amy C Alman et al.
Low back pain (LBP) disproportionately impacts US military veterans compared with nonveterans. Although the effect of psychological conditions on LBP is regularly studied, there is little published to date investigating nightmare disorder (NMD) and LBP. The purpose of this study was to (1) investigate whether an association exists between NMD and LBP and (2) estimate the effect of NMD diagnosis...
Therapies focused on lucid dreaming could be useful for treating various sleep disorders and other conditions. Still, one major roadblock is the paucity of systematic information on the consequences of attempting these sorts of dreams. The current study sought to quantify positive and negative aspects of seeking lucid dreams, describe their phenomenology in detail, and identify features...
Study objectives: To test and extend Levin & Nielsen's (2007) Affective Network Dysfunction (AND) model with nightmare disorder (ND) image characteristics, and then to implement the extension as a computational simulation, the Disturbed Dreaming Model (DDM). Methods: We used AnyLogic V7.2 to computationally implement an extended AND model incorporating quantitative effects of image...