OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. SETTINGS: University hospital sleep disorder unit. DESIGN: Case-control study. PARTICIPANTS: Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. METHODS: Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5...
BACKGROUND: Nightmares and bad dreams are common in people with emotional disturbances. For example, nightmares are a core symptom in posttraumatic stress disorder and about 50% of borderline personality disorder patients suffer from frequent nightmares. Independent of mental disorders, nightmares are often associated with sleep problems such as prolonged sleep latencies, poorer sleep quality,...
OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present exploratory clinical study was to evaluate LD as an add-on therapy for treating nightmares. METHODS: Thirty-two subjects having nightmares (ICD-10: F51.5) at least twice a week participated. Subjects were randomly assigned to group: A) Gestalt therapy group (= GTG), or B) Gestalt and lucid dreaming group therapy (= LDG). Each group lasted ten weeks....
Background: Images evoked immediately before the induction of anesthesia with the help of suggestions may influence dreaming during anesthesia.The aim of the study was to assess the incidence of evoked dreams and dream recalls by employing suggestions before induction of anesthesia while administering different general anesthetic combinations. Methods: This is a single center, prospective...
Lucid dreaming is a state of awareness that one is dreaming, without leaving the sleep state. Dream reports show that self-reflection and volitional control are more pronounced in lucid compared with nonlucid dreams. Mostly on these grounds, lucid dreaming has been associated with metacognition. However, the link to lucid dreaming at the neural level has not yet been explored. We sought for...
Objective: Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) has been related to altered, action-filled, vivid, and aggressive dream content, but research comparing the possible differences in dreams of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with and without RBD is scarce. The dream content of PD patients with and without RBD was analyzed with specific focus on action-filledness, vividness,...
In this meta-analysis, we compare the short-term efficacy of prazosin vs. IRT on nightmares, sleep quality, and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Reference databases were searched for randomized controlled trials using IRT or prazosin for nightmares, sleep disturbance, and/or PTSS. Effect sizes were calculated by subtracting the mean posttest score in the control group from the mean...
While many studies have examined the aetiological underpinnings and psychological correlates of nightmares, very few have focused on laypeople’s conceptions of the underlying causes of their own nightmares. The present study investigated laypeople’s causal beliefs about their worst nightmare experience and examined whether these beliefs varied as a function of participants’ gender, age of...
Sleep MedicineJanuary 2015Renato Foschi, Giovanni Pietro Lombardo, Giorgia Morgese
This article aims to reconstruct the elements of continuity and/or discontinuity in Sante De Sanctis' (1862-1935) contributions in the scientific understanding of sleep and dreaming as compared to the scientific research of his time. An Italian psychologist and psychiatrist, De Sanctis, in his work conducted between the 19th and 20th centuries, has framed the study of dreams using...
It has been claimed that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious mind. The present work argues that dreams and associated brain states such as memory, attention, flow, and perhaps even consciousness itself arise from diverse conflicts over control of time in the brain. Dreams are the brain's offline efforts to distill projections of the future, while memory represents the vestiges of the...