Nocturnal assaults by ghosts, revenants, and demons are a prominent feature in medieval writings on the supernatural. In modern sociological research, ‘nightmares’ – defined as sleep paralysis combined with REM hallucinations – are said to be a universal function of the human body, the symptoms of which are given meaning according to the mental schemas of the sufferer. The first part of the...
Although dream content may at times be quite outlandish or illogical, the dreamer's emotional reactions to these events are not outlandish or illogical. Our study shows that the dreamer's emotional reaction to people and events are similar to what they would have been in wake life. There is continuity between the emotional reactions of the dream and wake-self, even though situations may arise...
This article assesses the neurocognitive theory of dreams on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. The theory synthesizes findings from 3 strands of dream research, which focus respectively on the neural substrate that subserves dreaming, the development of dreaming in children, and quantitative findings on adult dream content, all 3 of which are necessary ingredients in any theory in cognitive...
There is ongoing controversy regarding the role of rapid eye movements (EMs) during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. One prevailing hypothesis is that EMs during REM sleep are indicative of the presence of visual imagery in dreams. We tested the validity of this hypothesis by measuring EMs in blind subjects and correlating these with visual dream content. Eleven blind subjects, of whom five were...
Study objectives: The aim of this study was to obtain preliminary data on the efficacy, credibility, and acceptability of Exposure, relaxation, and rescripting therapy for military service members and veterans (ERRT-M) in active duty military personnel with trauma-related nightmares. Methods: Forty participants were randomized to either 5 sessions of ERRT-M or 5 weeks of minimal contact control...
ABSTRACT Nightmares are vivid, extended and extremely dysphoric dreams that awaken the dreamer. Twin studies indicate that nightmare frequency has a heritability between 36 and 51% providing evidence for genetic factors underlying predisposition to nightmares. Furthermore, while cross-sectional epidemiological findings suggest that heavy alcohol usage, traumatic experiences and psychiatric...
Background: Dreaming is a universal experience, yet there is considerable inter-individual variability in dream recall frequency (DRF). One dominant model, the ‘arousal-retrieval’ model, posits that intra-sleep wakefulness is required for dream traces to be encoded into long-term storage, essentially proposing that a better memory for dreams underlie increased DRF. A recent study utilizing...
Abstract: Background: Nightmares are associated with parental bonding styles and various psychiatric disorders, but the exact connections between different nightmare experience features and family relationships in healthy volunteers and nightmare disorder patients are still unclear. Methods: We therefore invited 62 nightmare disorder patients and 135 healthy volunteers to undergo tests of the...
Recent neuroimaging studies have indicated that inter-individual variability in dream recall frequency (DRF) is associated with both resting-state regional cerebral blood flow and task-induced brain activations. However, the brain structure underpinning this inter-individual variability in DRF remains unclear. The aim of the current study is to investigate the relationship between brain...
Sleep significantly changes across the lifespan, and several studies underline its crucial role in cognitive functioning. Similarly, mental activity during sleep tends to covary with age. This review aims to analyze the characteristics of dreaming and disturbing dreams at different age brackets. On the one hand, dreams may be considered an expression of brain maturation and cognitive...
In this study, we examined the utility of attachment theory for explaining individual differences in dream experiences. Seventy-six Israeli undergraduates completed a measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance and participated in a daily diary study for 15 consecutive days. Each evening, they rated their daily sense of attachment security. Each morning, they described in writing any dreams...
Abstract Although gender differences in the dreams of adults have been studied extensively, large-scale studies in children and adolescents are scarce. The UK Library Study collected 1,995 most recent dreams of children and adolescents. Boys reported more physical aggression and fewer female characters in their dreams, whereas indoor settings were more prominent in girls’ dreams, results that...
Study objectives: In nightmare etiology, trait and state factors play important roles. However, the interaction of state and trait factors has never been studied in a longitudinal design. Methods: The current sample included 406 pregnant women who were followed up approximately 6 months after giving birth (n = 375) and 4 years later (n = 302). A nightmare frequency scale and several...
Imagery rescripting (IR) and imaginal exposure (IE) are two efficacious treatments for nightmare disorder, but their discrete underlying mechanism(s) remain largely unknown. We therefore examined mediators of the treatment effects of IR and IE in a randomized wait-list controlled trial (N = 104). Therapeutic outcomes were assessed at pre- and post-assessment, and mediator assessment took place...
The association between sleep and the menstrual cycle has been scarcely studied. This study aimed to investigate the association between dream recall and content and the menstrual cycle among a large sample of young women. To this aim, 944 women were asked about their day of menstrual cycle, whether they remembered the previous night's dreams and if they did so to describe the dream content as...
Individuals who frequently experience nightmares report compromised sleep quality, poor daytime mood, and functioning. Previous research has aimed at linking these impairments with altered sleep architecture, but results were inconclusive. One plausible explanation is that only a few studies recorded markers of autonomic nervous system activity. For the first time, this study collected such...
This paper proposed a smart alarm system based on sleep hypnagogia phase. Hypnagogia phase is an almost wakeful phase or mild sleep state. Waking up in this phase causes people to feel refreshed. This phase is indicated by sudden body movements during sleep or changes in position during sleep. This phase can be detected automatically by a Passive Infrared (PIR) Sensor. In this paper smart alarm...
The stream of human consciousness persists during sleep, albeit in altered form. Disconnected from external input, the mind and brain remain active, at times creating the bizarre sequences of thought and imagery that comprise "dreaming." Yet despite substantial effort toward understanding this unique state of consciousness, no reliable neurophysiological indicator of dreaming has been...
Soyeong Park, Su Jung Choi, Eun Yeon Joo, Sooyeon Suh Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, Department of Nursing, Samsung Medical Center, Department of Clinical Nursing Science, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Department of Neurology, Brain-Nerve Center, Samsung Medical Center, Samsung Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI), Sungkyunkwan University...