Under the assumption that dream recall is a peculiar form of declarative memory, we have hypothesized that (1) the encoding of dream contents during sleep should share some electrophysiological mechanisms with the encoding of episodic memories of the awake brain and (2) recalling a dream(s) after awakening from non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep should be...
Biological PsychologyMay 1, 2011Sarah Laxhmi Chellappa, Sylvia Frey, Vera Knoblauch et al.
Dreaming pertains to both REM and NREM sleep. However, frequency and regional specific differences in EEG activity remains controversial. We investigated NREM and REM sleep EEG power density associated with and without dream recall in 17 young subjects during a 40-h multiple nap protocol under constant routine conditions. NREM sleep was associated with lower EEG power density for dream recall...
From Joseph in the book of Genesis to the 2010 blockbuster Inception, dreams have been a source of fascination. The attraction seems to derive, in part, from their bizarreness. Indeed, it is rare to hear someone muse that “I had the craziest wakefulness last night.” But we are also compelled by the allure that dreams are imbued with meaning or that they reveal something about our psyche....
If both waking and dreaming consciousness are functional, their de-differentiation would be doubly detrimental. Differentiation between waking and dreaming is achieved through neuromodulation. During dreaming, without external sensory data and with mesolimbic dopaminergic input, hyper-cholinergic input almost totally suppresses the aminergic system. During waking, with sensory gates open,...
The author has indicated no financial conflicts of interest. Rosalind Cartwright, Professor Emeritus of Rush University Medical Center's Graduate College Neuroscience Division and founder of the first accredited Sleep Disorders and Research Center in the State of Illinois, recently published her fourth book on the topic of sleep and dreaming. She has previously written A Primer on Sleep and...
Study objectives: To conduct a systematic investigation on the prevalence, correlates, and familial aggregation of frequent nightmares in children, and to scrutinize the associations between frequent nightmares and parent-reported behavioral and mood problems in children. Design: A cross-sectional study was conducted by collecting the data on sociodemographic, sleep, behavioral, and...
Many studies have reported gender differences in nightmare frequency. In order to study this difference systematically, data from 111 independent studies have been included in the meta-analysis reported here. Overall, estimated effect sizes regarding the gender difference in nightmare frequency differed significantly from zero in three age groups of healthy persons (adolescents, young adults,...
NeuropharmacologyMarch 17, 2011Carla M Nappi, Sean P A Drummond, Joshua M H Hall
Emerging evidence supports the notion of disrupted sleep as a core component of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Effective treatments for nighttime PTSD symptoms are critical because sleep disruption may be mechanistically linked to development and maintenance of PTSD and is associated with significant distress, functional impairment, and poor health. This review aimed to describe the...
Increasing evidence supports the clinical view that alexithymia is associated with disturbed dreaming. However, a consistent, replicable pattern of relationships between alexithymia and different dreaming components has not yet been identified. Groups of sleep-disordered outpatients (N 580; 46.0 13.2 years) and nonclinical controls (N 145; 22.9 4.2 years) were administered the Toronto...
Early maternal separation is a particularly stressful experience. Current models of nightmare production emphasize negative emotionality as having a central role in determining dream affect. Our aim is to test the hypothesis that persons who experienced early maternal separation (before one year of age and lasting at least one month) report more frequent nightmare experiences and bad dreams as...
The relationship between resilience and lucid dreams, which involves awareness of the experience of dreaming, was examined in 79 Israeli young adults. Psychological distress and lucid dreams 3 years prior to exposure to terrorism, and exposure levels and psychological distress 1 week following exposure, were assessed. Both indirect exposure through media and perceived stress predicted an...
Lucid dreams occur when a person is aware that he is dreaming while he is dreaming. In a representative sample of German adults (N = 919), 51% of the participants reported that they had experienced a lucid dream at least once. Lucid dream recall was significantly higher in women and negatively correlated with age. However, these effects might be explained by the frequency of dream recall, as...
The Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa complicates the idea of fictionality, by underscoring the fact that the personality of Soares (the fictional author of The Book of Disquiet) is neither his own nor completely different, and showing how Pessoa was constrained by his own creations and creativity. This essay, "Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. Imagination, Reality and the Pleasure of...
This is the first study to empirically investigate the heuristic model of dysphoric dreaming proposed by Levin and Nielsen (2007) . Participants indicated their incidence of nightmares (NMs) and bad dreams (BDs) over 21 days, and rated their subsequent distress in daily dream logs. Results support the contention that the 2 constructs identified in the model, affect load (AL) and affect distress...
Important sports events are highlights and stressful situations in every athlete's career. This stress might alter the dream content of athletes and consequently evoke disturbed dreaming. In this study, the authors asked 840 German athletes from various sports about distressing dreams on the nights before an important competition or game. About 15% of the athletes stated that they experienced...
STUDY OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether insomnia symptoms and nightmares are related to suicidal ideation independent of one another and independent of the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). DESIGN: The study consisted of questionnaires examining insomnia symptoms and nightmares, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and...
Contemporary psychologists investigate the dream’s role in memory. 1 Yet, our existential experience of the dream is one of forgetting— of being immersed in a reality that seems to stretch back in time to an origin beyond remembrance. At the next moment, we wake and the dream vanishes from the horizon of consciousness, sometimes completely but even when we retain it, our reports to a friend or...
Objective: The objective of this study was to clarify the prevalence of nightmares and sleep paralysis and associated factors among Japanese adolescents. Methods: This study was designed as a cross-sectional sampling survey. The targets were junior and senior high schools throughout Japan. Self-reported anonymous questionnaires were sent to schools for all students to complete. Results: A total...
Origin of night dream has been an enigma through whole history of human race. Descriptions in the Bible have shown that the ancients regarded dream experiences as a consequence of the supernatural power outside. Since the early twentieth century, progresses of psychology have proposed that night dream comes from the unconscious mind inside. Finally in 1953, Aserinsky and Kleiteman discovered...
This thesis deals with the electrophysiological correlates of sleep prior to dream recall and the age-related effects on dream processing. The dual NREM/REM sleep cycle and the circadian modulation of REM sleep sum to generate dream processing. However, little is known about the age-related effects on dream recall during both NREM and REM sleep, which comprises the first aim of this thesis. To...