Recovery sleep after sleep deprivation almost completely abolishes dream recall.
Luigi De Gennaro, Cristina Marzano, Fabio Moroni, Giuseppe Curcio, Michele Ferrara, Carlo Cipolli
Behavioural Brain Research January 20, 2010 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2009.09.030 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 40 |
| Population | Healthy subjects |
| Duration | 40 h of prolonged wakefulness followed by one recovery night |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key findings | One night of recovery sleep after 40 hours of prolonged wakefulness produced an almost complete abolition of dream recall, with an around 75% decrease relative to adaptation and baseline nights. |
Abstract
The study investigated the effect of one night of sleep deprivation on dream recall at morning awakening after recovery sleep. Forty healthy subjects were studied after adaptation (A) and baseline nights (B), and a recovery (R) night following 40 h of prolonged wakefulness. Parallel to the well-known recovery sleep changes (slow-wave sleep--SWS--rebound, decreased number of awakenings and of REM sleep amount), an almost complete abolition of dream recall was found, with an around 75% decrease with respect to the adaptation and baseline nights. The number of dreams recalled by those subjects with successful recall (REC) did not significantly differ between nights. Moreover, gender and sleep stage at awakening did not affect either the proportion of REC subjects or the number of dreams recalled by REC subjects during each night. Finally, the drastic impairment of dream recall after R night was associated to a larger increase of SWS and a shorter REM sleep duration. We suggest that dream recall could have been impaired during R night because: (i) the lower number of spontaneous awakenings over the night reduced the contents available in memory as possible cues for the retrieval of dream experiences at morning; (ii) mental experiences, having been elaborated during SWS more than in the other nights, were less dreamlike (i.e., perceptually vivid and bizarre) and, thus less accessible at morning recall than those elaborated during the nights with a higher proportion of REM sleep; (iii) dream contents, as a peculiar type of episodic information, were less consolidated because of the lower effectiveness of declarative memory during recovery sleep.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming Student volunteers trained to become lucid and signal lucidity with horizontal eye... | 2009 | Observational study | n = 6 |
| Nightmare Prevalence, Nightmare Distress, and Self-Reported Psychological Disturbance Young adults with a mean age of 20 years | 2002 | Prospective observational study | n = 116 |
| Long-term effects of extreme situational stress on sleep and dreaming Survivors of traumatic events who complained of sleep disturbances, compared with... | 1987 | Case-control study | n = 11 |
| The relationship of nightmare frequency and nightmare distress to well‐being Adults who reported dreams | 2004 | Observational cohort | n = 147 |
| Dreaming in NREM Sleep: A High-Density EEG Study of Slow Waves and Spindles Healthy human subjects | 2018 | Observational cohort | n = 14 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 28
- Amygdala and hippocampus volumetry and diffusivity in relation to dreaming Human Brain Mapping August 25, 2010
- What about dreams? State of the art and open questions Journal of Sleep Research April 13, 2022
- Spotlight on dream recall: the ages of dreams Nature and Science of Sleep 2018
- Increased Awakenings From Non-rapid Eye Movement Sleep Explain Differences in Dream Recall Frequency in Healthy Individuals Frontiers in Human Neuroscience October 15, 2019
- Investigation on Neurobiological Mechanisms of Dreaming in the New Decade Brain Sciences February 11, 2021
and 23 more in the library
Cites 8
- Factors of home dream recall: a structural equation model Journal of Sleep Research May 12, 2003
- Dreams in patients with sleep disorders. Sleep Medicine Reviews June 1, 2009
- Gender differences in dream recall: a meta‐analysis Journal of Sleep Research June 1, 2008
- Absorption, psychological boundaries and attitude towards dreams as correlates of dream recall: two decades of research seen through a meta-analysis. Journal of Sleep Research March 1, 2007
- Alexithymia and dream recall upon spontaneous morning awakening. Psychosomatic Medicine March 1, 2003
and 3 more in the library