Objectives: We aimed to examine dream recall and nightmare distress in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and identify the associating factors.Methods: This cross-sectional study retrospectively enrolled adult participants (age ≥18 years) with newly diagnosed OSA that was confirmed by full-night polysomnography between 2016 and 2022. Dreaming components were assessed using a nine-item...
Until recently, understanding the neurobiology of dreaming has relied upon on correlating a subjective dream report with a measure of brain activity or function sampled from a different occasion. As such, most assumptions about dreaming come from the neuroscience of rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep from which many, but not all, dream reports are recalled. Core features of REM sleep (intense...
The boundaries between waking and sleeping-when falling asleep (hypnagogic) or waking up (hypnopompic)-can be challenging for our ability to monitor and interpret reality. Without proper understanding, bizarre but relatively normal hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences can be misinterpreted as psychotic hallucinations (occurring, by definition, in the fully awake state), potentially leading to...
AIMS Public HealthDecember 18, 2023A. Pachi, Athanasios Tselebis, Christos Sikaras et al.
Introduction The pandemic has led to notable psychological challenges among healthcare professionals, including nurses. Objective Our aims of this study were to assess insomnia and nightmare distress levels in nurses and investigate their association with mental resilience. Methods Nurses participated in an online survey, which included the Nightmare Distress Questionnaire (NDQ), Brief...
Abstract The frequent appearance of newly learned information in dreams suggests that dream content is influenced by memory consolidation. Many studies have tested this hypothesis by asking whether dreaming about a learning task is associated with improved memory, but results have been inconsistent. We conducted a meta-analysis to determine the strength of the association between...
Abstract Research indicates that adults suffering from nightmares rarely seek professional help for their condition. However, nothing is known about the help-seeking behavior in adolescents with frequent nightmares. In a sample of 100 adolescents (50 female, 50 male) with a mean age of 15.30 ± 0.80 years, it was found that none of them ever sought professional help for nightmares, even though...
Out-of body experiences (OBEs) are characterized by the subjective experience of being located outside the physical body. Evidence supports that OBEs triggered by electrical stimulation and epileptic seizures are associated with disrupted brain activity in a distributed network centred at the temporo-parietal junction and the resulting multisensory disruption of body representation. However,...
Little is known about the prevalence and associations between war-related variables among Ukrainians during the Russian invasion. The present study assesses the prevalence and associations between exposure to war (EW), nightmares of war (NW), insomnia, and war-related post-traumatic stress disorder (WPTSD) among university students from Ukraine. During the war, an online cross-sectional study...
Introduction Chronic nightmares are a common and disabling feature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for which broadly effective treatments are still lacking. While imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) demonstrates benefits for patients with idiopathic nightmares and some patients with PTSD-related nightmares, research indicates it may be less beneficial for veterans. Narrative therapy (NT) is...
This study employed an analog design to evaluate optimal cut scores for the Nightmare Experience Scale (NExS) to identify individuals with possible clinically salient nightmares (CSNs) in a nonclinical sample. Undergraduate participants (N = 480) completed the NExS, the Disturbing Dream and Nightmare Severity Index (DDNSI), and the SLEEP-50 Nightmare Scale (S50-N). Using established DDNSI and...
Wakefulness, non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) and rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep differ from each other along three dimensions: behavioral, phenomenological, physiological. Although these dimensions often fluctuate in step, they can also dissociate. The current paradigm that views sleep as made of global NREM and REM states fail to account for these dissociations. This conundrum can be dissolved...
The normal human sleep period has two main cycles: REM [rapid eye movement] and NREM [non-rapid eye movement].Typically, people go through the three stages of NREM sleep, then to the one stage of REM.Human dreaming occurs during both cycles, more frequently during REM.Whether non-human animals go through the same sleep cycle is still in question, and the answer could determine whether animals...
Contemporary diagnostic practice in psychiatry relies on the tick-box approach of diagnostic manuals. In light of the obvious limitations of diagnostic systems, narrative formulations, whether in the form of biological, psychodynamic or behavioural cognitive ones, have been proposed. Their approach, which can be caricatured as one of drawing arrows, enriches our clinical tools and practice but...
The research literature on religious dreaming demonstrates the commonness of supernatural agent (SA) imagery, as well as various ritualistic and divinatory uses of dream content in the waking state.Less well mapped is the related domain of dream imagery about rituals (DIR).This article aims to provide a survey and analysis of DIR items and interactions in line with dream and ritual theories,...
European PsychiatryNovember 17, 2023C. Alvarez Garcia, L. Nocete Navarro, A. Sanz Giancola
Introduction Posttraumatic nightmares are one of the most frequent symptoms in posttraumatic stress disorder. Prevalence can be up to 96%. These nightmares evoke the experienced traumatic event, causing a negative impact. Besides, they are and independent risk for suicide. There are different pharmacological and non-pharmacological options for PTN, despite is no optimal treatment. Objectives To...
Introduction In nightmare disorder, dysfunctional emotion regulation goes along with poor subjective sleep quality, which is characterised by pathophysiological features such as abnormal arousal processes and sympathetic influences. Dysfunctional parasympathetic regulation, especially before and during REM phases, is assumed to alter heart rate (HR) and its variability (HRV) of frequent...
Introduction Insomnia and Nightmare disorder are the two most common comorbid sleep disturbances in psychotic conditions. However, insomnia and psychotic symptoms are umbrella terms that hide the heterogeneity of these concepts. Several studies have found that worsening sleep quality is associated with the strengthening of psychotic symptoms. Until now, there was less interest in the...
Lucid dreaming, a rare state in which the dreamer realizes that he or she is dreaming, has captured the interest of scholars and sparked extensive research. This article explores the historical trajectory of lucid dreaming research, tracing its roots to the early writings of Frederick van Eeden and highlighting the key scientific contributions of Stephen LaBerge. Through a rigorous methodology,...
Research SquareOctober 19, 2023H. Charles Li, Thomas T. Hills
preprint
Abstract Mind wandering and daydreaming reflect non-deliberate and deliberate forms of mental exploration. However, it is not yet known to what extent the kinds of things that come to mind during these exploratory events are similar or different. The current research addresses this question by having participants engage in either a mindfulness task or a daydreaming task, with instructions to...