We investigated whether inconsistencies in previous studies regarding emotional experiences in dreams derive from whether dream emotions are self-rated or externally evaluated. Seventeen subjects were monitored with polysomnography in the sleep laboratory and awakened from every rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage 5 min after the onset of the stage. Upon awakening, participants gave an oral...
Home dream recall frequencies and nightmare frequencies show great inter-individual differences. Most of the studies trying to explain these differences, however, studied young participants, so these findings might not be true for persons older than 25 years. The present study investigated the relationship between dream recall, nightmare frequency, age, gender, sleep parameters, stress, and...
Converging evidence suggests that dreaming is influenced by the consolidation of memory during sleep. Following encoding, recently formed memory traces are gradually stabilized and reorganized into a more permanent form of long-term storage. Sleep provides an optimal neurophysiological state to facilitate this process, allowing memory networks to be repeatedly reactivated in the absence of new...
Objectives: We aimed to assess dream content in groups of congenitally blind (CB), late blind (LB), and age- and sex-matched sighted control (SC) participants. Methods: We conducted an observational study of 11 CB, 14 LB, and 25 SC participants and collected dream reports over a 4-week period. Every morning participants filled in a questionnaire related to the sensory construction of the dream,...
SleepFebruary 1, 2014Erin J. Wamsley, Claire E H M Donjacour, Thomas E Scammell et al.
We investigated a generally unappreciated feature of the sleep disorder narcolepsy, in which patients mistake the memory of a dream for a real experience and form sustained delusions about significant events. We interviewed patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls to establish the prevalence of this complaint and identify its predictors. Academic medical centers in Boston, Massachusetts...
Study objectives: To conduct a comprehensive and comparative study of prospectively collected bad dream and nightmare reports using a broad range of dream content variables. Design: Correlational and descriptive. Setting: Participants' homes. Participants: Three hundred thirty-one adult volunteers (55 men, 275 women, 1 not specified; mean age = 32.4 ± 14.8 y). Interventions: N/A. Measurement...
Cognitive bizarreness has been shown to be equally elevated in the dream and waking mentation of acutely symptomatic inpatients diagnosed with affective and non-affective psychoses. Although some studies have reported on dream content in non-psychotic depression, no study has previously measured this formal aspect of cognition in patients hospitalized for Psychotic Major Depression (PMD)....
A single client with depression and chronic nightmares was treated with 4 sessions of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and showed a decrease in nightmares and improvement in general well-being. The client’s 2 nightmare images were resolved following Luber’s (2010) protocol for nightmare processing. Treatment effects were measured with the Outcome Rating Scale and showed a...
There have been many studies which show that waking life is mirrored in dream content. In a previous study, the relation between time spent on sports related tasks and sport dreams has been shown where that sports students dream more often of sports than psychology students. In this study the aim was to test whether this trend is also true for students of politics and if the time spent in...
Psychotherapy Research2014Clara E Hill, Sarah Knox, Rachel E Crook-Lyon et al.
Retracted
Our objectives were to describe the frequency of therapists' dreams about their clients and clients' dreams about their therapists, to determine how therapists and clients who had such dreams differed from those who did not have such dreams, whether therapy process and outcome differed for those who had and did not have such dreams, and to describe the content and consequences of these dreams....
A recent meta-analysis showed a robust gender difference in nightmare frequency of medium effect size in adolescents and young adults: Women tend to report nightmares more frequently than men. The present study, carried out in an unselected student sample, indicates that 2 factors mediate the gender difference in nightmare frequency: neuroticism and overall dream recall frequency. The effect of...
The contrast between self- and other-produced tickles, as a special case of sensory attenuation for self-produced actions, has long been a target of empirical research. While in standard wake states it is nearly impossible to tickle oneself, there are interesting exceptions. Notably, participants awakened from REM (rapid eye movement-) sleep dreams are able to tickle themselves. So far,...
Consciousness is a multifaceted concept; its different aspects vary across species, vigilance states, or health conditions. While basal aspects of consciousness like perceptions and emotions are present in many states and species, higher-order aspects like reflective or volitional capabilities seem to be most pronounced in awake humans. Here we assess the experience of volition across different...