Sleep Medicine Clinics
December 1, 2009
Brant P Hasler, Anne Germain
Nightmares, distressing dreams that primarily arise from REM sleep, are prevalent among the general population and even more so among clinical populations. The frequency of nightmares and related nightmare distress are linked to both sleep disturbance and waking psychopathology. Based on the extant evidence, nightmares appear to be particularly relevant to posttraumatic stress disorder, and may...
Psychotherapy
December 1, 2009
Valérie Simard, Tore Nielsen
This study investigated the effectiveness of a psychotherapeutic treatment for nightmares that was adapted for 6- to 11-year-old children from imagery rehearsal therapy. Ten child-mother dyads took part in a 3-session, 8-week treatment protocol. Participation in the study (contact with clinician, keeping a prospective dream log) was associated with decreases unpleasant dreams frequency,...
Contemporary Hypnosis
December 1, 2009
Brigitte Holzinger
AbstractAlthough the concept of ‘lucid dreaming’ was first coined by Frederik Willems van Eeden, a Dutch psychiatrist, and introduced at the meeting of The Society for Psychical Research held on 22 April 1913, the phenomenon of lucid dreaming was already known in earlier historical periods and its descriptions can be found in writings of Aristotle. However, modern lucid dreaming research was...
Journal of Traumatic Stress
November 11, 2009
Leslie M Swanson, Todd Favorite, Elizabeth V. Horin et al.
88 citations
Insomnia and nightmares are hallmarks of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sleep disturbances in PTSD negatively impact clinical course and functioning. In this open clinical trial, the preliminary effects of a combined treatment for insomnia and nightmares in combat veterans with PTSD were assessed. Ten combat veterans participated in a 10-session group treatment combining...
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
November 2009
J Allan Hobson
Dreaming has fascinated and mystified humankind for ages: the bizarre and evanescent qualities of dreams have invited boundless speculation about their origin, meaning and purpose. For most of the twentieth century, scientific dream theories were mainly psychological. Since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the neural underpinnings of dreaming have become increasingly well...
European journal of anaesthesiology
October 2009
Audrey Singyi Eer, Usha Padmanabhan, Kate Leslie
Dreaming is commonly reported after propofol-based sedation. We measured the incidence of dreaming and bispectral index (BIS) values in colonoscopy patients sedated with combinations of propofol, midazolam and fentanyl. Two hundred patients presenting for elective outpatient colonoscopy were sedated with combinations of propofol, midazolam and fentanyl. BIS was monitored throughout the...
International Journal of Psychophysiology
October 1, 2009
Valdas Noreika, Katja Valli, Hetti Lahtela et al.
A new experimental paradigm called "Early-Night Serial Awakenings" (ENSA) was explored to find out its strengths and weaknesses for psychophysiological studies of NREM sleep dreaming. Five participants spent 20 experimental nights in the sleep laboratory, and were serially awakened with approximately 24-minute intervals during Stages 2 and 3 of NREM sleep. As a total, 164 awakenings were...
Consciousness and Cognition
September 10, 2009
Kelly Bulkeley
This paper systematizes the word search potential of DreamBank.net (Domhoff & Schneider, 2008a, 2008b) by formulating and testing a set of word strings that can be used as default analytic categories in future investigations. The word strings are applied to the 981 dream reports of college students gathered by Hall and Van de Castle (1966) and the 136 dream reports of an 80-year old male...
The European Journal of Psychiatry
September 1, 2009
Celestine Okorome Mume
34 citations
Background and Objectives: Nightmare is a common sleep disorder.While a sleep disorder such as insomnia can readily be associated with psychiatric disorders, the same cannot be said of nightmare.The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence rate of nightmare in a sample of psychiatric patients, and to compare this rate with the rate obtained in age-and sex-matched healthy control...
Anesthesiology
September 1, 2009
Kate Leslie, Jamie Sleigh, Michael J Paech et al.
Dream recall is reportedly more common after propofol than after volatile anesthesia, but this may be due to delayed emergence or more amnesia after longer-acting volatiles. The electroencephalographic signs of dreaming during anesthesia and the differences between propofol and desflurane also are unknown. The authors therefore compared dream recall after propofol- or desflurane-maintained...
Sleep
September 1, 2009
Sarah Laxhmi Chellappa, Mirjam Münch, Katharina Blatter et al.
The ultradian NREM-REM sleep cycle and the circadian modulation of REM sleep sum to generate dreaming. Here we investigated age-related changes in dream recall, number of dreams, and emotional domain characteristics of dreaming during both NREM and REM sleep. Analysis of dream recall and sleep EEG (NREM/REM sleep) during a 40-h multiple nap protocol (150 min of wakefulness and 75 min of sleep)...
Sleep
September 1, 2009
Ursula Voss, Romain Holzmann, Inka Tuin et al.
443 citations
STUDY OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study was to seek physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a dissociated state with aspects of waking and dreaming combined in a way so as to suggest a specific alteration in brain physiology for which we now present preliminary but intriguing evidence. We show that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like...
Journal of Aggression Maltreatment & Trauma
July 23, 2009
Gerlinde C. Harb, Joan M. Cook, Philip Gehrman et al.
42 citations
A substantial proportion of returnees from the Iraq war have significant psychological symptoms related to war zone exposure, including high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nightmares, and sleep disturbances. This pilot investigation examined the feasibility and efficacy of a promising cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) for nightmares, Imagery Rehearsal, combined with CBT for...
Schizophrenia Research
July 1, 2009
Félix-Antoine Lusignan, Antonio Zadra, Marie-Josée Dubuc et al.
Many clinical, laboratory and non-laboratory studies have examined dream content reported by patients with schizophrenia but findings have been variable and inconsistent. Using both questionnaire-based measures and laboratory REM sleep awakenings, we investigated dream content in 14 patients with schizophrenia (mean age=25.5+/-3.2 years) under atypical antipsychotic medication and 15 healthy...
Journal of Sleep Research
June 22, 2009
Michael Schredl, Desislava Atanasova, Karl Hörmann et al.
Research has shown that external stimuli presented during sleep can affect dream content, thus reflecting information processing of the sleeping brain. Olfactory stimuli should have a stronger effect on dream emotions because their processing is linked directly to the limbic system. Because selective olfactory stimulation does not increase arousal activity, intense olfactory stimulation is...
Sleep Science
June 1, 2009
C Timo‐Iaria, Angela C. Valle
Dreaming has been a subject of cogitation since remote Antiquity. In ancient Greece, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle discussed about the meaning of dreams, concluding that the prevailing mistic and mythic concepts about them were incorrect. Instead, they thought that dreams were not provoked by spirits, ghosts or gods, which took over the mind to express themselves through dreaming. Aristotle[ 1...
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
June 1, 2009
Nightmares, neurophenomenology and the cultural logic of trauma.
Journal of Traumatic Stress
June 1, 2009
Mary Lu, Amy Wagner, Lynn Van Male et al.
Imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) may help reduce residual nightmares and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in veterans after trauma-focused PTSD treatment. Fifteen male U.S. veterans with PTSD and trauma-related nightmares, who had not previously completed trauma-focused PTSD treatment, attended 6 IRT group sessions. No benefits were observed immediately posttreatment. At 3- and...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
June 1, 2009
Michael Schredl
Dream recall is naturally a prerequisite for eliciting dream content. Therefore it is of importance to study factors (e.g., personality traits) that might affect dream recall because these factors might bias the content analytic findings in the field of dream research. The present findings indicate that different aspects of dream recall (dream recall frequency, dream recall detail, long-term...
Psychiatry Research
May 30, 2009
Michael Schredl, Mathias Berger, Dieter Riemann
Trimipramine is a sedating tricyclic antidepressant which is not only effective in the treatment of depression but also in primary insomnia. In contrast to most other antidepressants, trimipramine does not affect rapid eye movement sleep. In a large sample of depressive outpatients (N = 3926), the effect of trimipramine on dream recall and dream emotions was studied. The effect of trimipramine...