Dreaming, a universal phenomenon linked to REM sleep, arises from intricate interactions between limbic regions, cortical networks, and neurotransmitter dynamics. Neuroimaging highlights amygdala and hippocampal hyperactivity alongside prefrontal cortex hypoactivity, elucidating the emotional vividness and cognitive disorganization of dreams. Cholinergic pathways drive REM sleep, while...
The interplay between psychedelics, such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and sleep is an emerging area, but their impact on sleep remains relatively underexplored. This viewpoint provides a perspective on how psychedelics may alter sleep phases, dreaming, and their potential therapeutic applications for sleep disorders.
Lucid dreaming (LD) is a state of conscious awareness of the ongoing oneiric state, predominantly linked to REM sleep. Progress in understanding its neurobiological basis has been hindered by small sample sizes, diverse EEG setups, and artifacts like saccadic eye movements. To address these challenges in characterizing the electrophysiological correlates of LD, we introduced an adaptive...
Human creative activities have been postulated to be related to insomnia and dreaming during sleep. The current preliminary cross-sectional study investigated the associations between insomnia, dreaming, and creativity of choreography in young female dancers. Forty-six female contemporary dancers were included in the present online study and divided into two groups, creative choreographic...
Throughout history, the development of new sleep medicines has been driven by progress in our understanding of the mechanisms underlying sleep. Ancient civilisations used their understanding of the sedative nature of natural herbs and compounds to induce sleep. The discovery of barbiturates and bromides heralded a new era of synthetic sleep medicine in the 19th century. This was followed by the...
Researchers have established that dreams are intensely social and populated by diverse characters, including important figures from the dreamer's daily life. This study examines the types of characters that appeared in participant dreams over two weeks. We found that the majority of dreams include strangers in addition to known individuals, and that personality measures impact the likelihood of...
SleepMay 1, 2025Kira Clare, Riona Yoshida, Kimberly Savin et al.
Nightmares and insomnia commonly co-occur with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with 70% to 91% of individuals with PTSD reporting chronic nightmares and insomnia. Evidence suggests that even gold standard treatments for PTSD (such as Prolonged Exposure, PE) and insomnia (CBT-I) individually may not fully resolve nightmares. Our study presents secondary analyses of a randomized controlled...
A robust body of research has linked nightmares to suicide. For example, research has found that nightmares predict suicidal ideation above and beyond other mental health symptoms (such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder) and that treating nightmares may indirectly decrease the risk of suicide. Considering the established link between nightmares and suicide, our goal was to...
Nightmares and non-nightmare sleep disturbances are a core feature of posttraumatic stress disorder. Effective treatments remain elusive. Doxazosin is an alpha-1 adrenergic blocker with demonstrated promise, but there is a dearth of evidence from randomized controlled trials on its effectiveness. We report findings from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial evaluating the...
Fear of sleep engenders arousal at bedtime that can promote nightmares. Living in disadvantaged neighborhoods with high rates of community violence may exacerbate fear of sleep and in turn increase nightmare risk. We tested fear of sleep among acute trauma patients as a prospective predictor of nightmares, and whether exposure to community violence moderated this relationship. Patients...
Many studies involving the relationship between personality and nightmare frequency (NF), common in cross-sectional data, have only looked at neuroticism in isolation, assumed a linear relationship, or did not include nightmare disorder index (NDI) to determine if personality traits might predict NDI over NF. While neuroticism is the personality trait most commonly associated with nightmares,...
Nightmare Disorder (NDO) is estimated to impact at least 4% of the US adult population yet is reported to be much higher among service members (SMs). Our Center has previously reported 31.2% of referred SMs had probable NDO based on screening measures, yet only 3.9% reported nightmares as a reason for evaluation. No quality measures report on the rate of confirmed diagnosis, and more...
Nightmare disorder (NDO) is a significant but often under-recognized condition, especially within the military population. We previously reported that 31.2% of patients referred to our military sleep disorders center have NDO, yet only 3.9% were referred for NDO. Despite the general population’s NDO prevalence (2-8%), our center had no referrals for NDO from June 1 to August 31, 2024. This...
There is currently no consensus on the definition of nightmares. Most participants define nightmares as “bad dreams” with intense, distressing emotions. Per the DSM-5, nightmares are distressing dreams, but to be diagnosed with nightmare disorder, the dreams must awaken the dreamer. Surprisingly, research has not evaluated the characteristics dreamers use to categorize their nightmares....
SleepMay 1, 2025Lefulesele Kholoane, Roberta Jacobs, Nichole Mogharreban et al.
One in ten US Veterans endorse trauma-related nightmares in their lifetime. Imagery rehearsal therapy is an effective and time-efficient therapy which is not widely accessible. We sought to evaluate if a group format could improve access to treatment. This quality improvement project utilized Plan-Do-Study-Act methodology to evaluate impact on access to care by creating a group format for...
Both voluntary mental imagery and dream imagery involve multisensory representations without externally present stimuli that can be categorized as offline perceptions. Due to common mechanisms, correlations between multisensory dream imagery profiles and multisensory voluntary mental imagery profiles were hypothesized. In a sample of 226 participants, correlations within the respective state of...
The Nightmare Relief (NR) protocol is an embodied experiential approach to treating nightmares. NR incorporates elements of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) and includes steps that help with emotional and nervous system regulation. The protocol is a five-stage process: Instilling hope and positive expectation; calming and clearing; retelling the dream; finding and embodying helpful dream...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychiatric condition that affects approximately 6% of the US population, with even higher rates among veterans. Sleep disturbances (e.g., distressing dreams) are among the most reported symptoms in individuals with PTSD. Distressing dreams (sometimes referred to as nightmares) have been associated with significant negative mental health...
arXiv Preprint ArchiveApril 2, 2025Robin Guillard, Nicolas Dauman, Aurélien Cadix et al.
preprint
(1) Background: Tinnitus is the perception of phantom sound in the absence of a corresponding external source. Previous studies reported that the presence of tinnitus is notably absent during dreams. This study aimed at replicating previous findings regarding tinnitus-free dreams, while also gaining a deeper understanding of tinnitus manifestations during dreams and after awakening. (2)...
Introduction Nightmares have been linked to childhood trauma and an increased risk for mental health problems, such as depression. Meanwhile, there is a high comrobdity of nightmares and insomnia. Yet relatively few studies have compared the clinical presentations of nightmares in different clinical groups. Additionally, considering the close association between childhood trauma, insomnia, and...