Structural organization of dream experience during daytime sleep-onset rapid eye movement period sleep of patients with narcolepsy type 1.

People with narcolepsy type 1 recalled detailed dream experiences after 75% of naps that included sleep onset REM periods (SOREMPs) and after 25% of naps without REM sleep. Story-grammar analysis showed that dreams from daytime SOREMP naps are organized as hierarchically ordered sequences of events, called dream-stories, which are longer and more complex in the first and fourth SOREMP naps and comparable in structure to dreams from nighttime REM sleep. This similar structural organization suggests that the cognitive processes underlying dreaming are highly, though not uniformly, effective during daytime SOREMP sleep, and investigating these dreams may clarify links between brain physiology and psychological processes in REM dreaming.

Study at a glance

Abstract

To assess the frequency of dream experience (DE) developed during naps at Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) by patients with narcolepsy type 1 (NT1) and establish, using story-grammar analysis, the structural organization of DEs developed during naps with sleep onset rapid eye movement (REM) period (SOREMP) sleep compared with their DEs during early- and late-night REM sleep. Thirty drug-free cognitively intact adult NT1 patients were asked to report DE developed during each MSLT nap. Ten NT1 patients also spent voluntarily a supplementary night being awakened during the first-cycle and third-cycle REM sleep. Patients provided dream reports, white dreams, and no dreams, whose frequencies were matched in naps with SOREMP versus non-REM (NREM) sleep. All dream reports were then analyzed using story-grammar rules. DE was recalled in detail (dream report) by NT1 patients after 75% of naps with SOREMP sleep and after 25% of naps with NREM sleep. Dream reports were provided by 8 out of 10 NT1 patients after both awakenings from nighttime REM sleep. Story-grammar analysis of dream reports showed that SOREMP-DEs are organized as hierarchically ordered sequences of events (so-called dream-stories), which are longer and more complex in the first and fourth SOREMP naps and are comparable with nighttime REM-DEs. The similar structural organization of SOREMP-DEs with nighttime REM-DEs indicates that their underlying cognitive processes are highly, albeit not uniformly, effective during daytime SOREMP sleep. Given the peculiar neurophysiology of SOREMP sleep, investigating SOREMP-DEs may cast further light on the relationships between the neurophysiological and psychological processes involved in REM-dreaming.