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Issues in Mental Health Nursing May 2018
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Sleep Medicine Reviews Oct 2004A review of the scientific literature clarifies several chronobiological features of dreaming. The literature supports the conclusions that dreaming 'intensity' and, to... (Review)
Review
A review of the scientific literature clarifies several chronobiological features of dreaming. The literature supports the conclusions that dreaming 'intensity' and, to a lesser extent dream-like quality, is modulated by (1) a sinusoidal, 90-min ultradian oscillation, (2) a 'switch-like' circadian oscillation, (3) a 12-h circasemidian rhythm, and (4) a 28-day circatrigintan rhythm (for women). Further, access to dream memory sources appears to be modulated by (5) a 7-day circaseptan rhythm. Further study of these rhythmic influences on dreaming may help to explain diverse and often contradictory findings in the dream research literature, to clarify relationships between dreaming and waking cognitive processes, to explain relationships between disturbed phase relationships and dream disturbances and to shed new light on the problems of dreaming's functions and biological markers. Further chronobiological studies of dreaming will likely enable the development of theoretical models that explain how interactions between and within major levels of oscillation determine the variable characteristics of dreaming.
Topics: Adult; Age Factors; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Biological Clocks; Brain; Chronobiology Phenomena; Circadian Rhythm; Dreams; Female; Humans; Male; Mental Recall; Middle Aged; Sleep Stages; Wakefulness
PubMed: 15336239
DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2004.06.005 -
International Review of Neurobiology 2010There is a widespread consensus that emotion is important in dreams, deriving from both biological and psychological studies. However, the emphasis on examining emotions... (Review)
Review
There is a widespread consensus that emotion is important in dreams, deriving from both biological and psychological studies. However, the emphasis on examining emotions explicitly mentioned in dreams is misplaced. The dream is basically made of imagery. The focus of our group has been on relating the dream imagery to the dreamer's underlying emotion. What is most important is the underlying emotion--the emotion of the dreamer, not the emotion in the dream. This chapter discusses many studies relating the dream-especially the central image of the dream--to the dreamer's underlying emotion. Focusing on the underlying emotion leads to a coherent and testable view of the nature of dreaming. It also helps to clarify some important puzzling features of the literature on dreams, such as why the clinical literature is different in so many ways from the experimental literature, especially the laboratory-based experimental literature. Based on central image intensity and the associated underlying emotion, we can identify a hierarchy of dreams, from the highest-intensity, "big dreams," to the lowest-intensity dreams from laboratory awakenings.
Topics: Dreams; Emotions; Humans; Imagination; Sleep; Symbolism
PubMed: 20870069
DOI: 10.1016/S0074-7742(10)92010-2 -
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly Oct 1995There is a large body of literature that focuses on acting out, but there is little literature on a clear action in analysis, the written dream. The literature that does... (Review)
Review
There is a large body of literature that focuses on acting out, but there is little literature on a clear action in analysis, the written dream. The literature that does exist describes and determinants primarily. This paper, with a clinical vignette at its center, calls attention to primal scene fantasies and wishes as one major impetus to the presentation of a written dream. The central theoretical point is to link Lewin's idea of analysis as a dream with the written dream as an action which invites the analyst into the dream.
Topics: Dreams; Humans; Psychoanalysis; Psychoanalytic Interpretation; Sleep
PubMed: 8584593
DOI: No ID Found -
Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine :... Jan 2018Few studies have addressed dreaming in patients with sleep apnea. We hypothesized that respiratory events and subsequent oxygen desaturation act as an important...
STUDY OBJECTIVES
Few studies have addressed dreaming in patients with sleep apnea. We hypothesized that respiratory events and subsequent oxygen desaturation act as an important physiological trigger and may thus influence dream content in patients with a sleep-related breathing disorder.
METHODS
Seventy-six patients (28 women, mean age 54 years, range 20-82) who underwent polysomnography because of suspected sleep apnea participated in this study. Dream reports and dream questionnaires were collected immediately after first morning awakening, at 5:30 AM, at the sleep laboratory. Dream content analysis with respect to possible respiratory-related content was performed. Patients were stratified into primary snoring, mild, moderate, and severe sleep apnea groups.
RESULTS
In 63 patients sleep apnea was diagnosed (mild n = 31, 49.2%, moderate n = 13, 20.6%, severe n = 19, 30.2%), and 13 subjects in whom a sleep-related breathing disorder was not confirmed were included as a control group with primary snoring. There was no significant difference in respiratory-related dream topics between patients and controls. Also, no influence of respiratory parameters measured during polysomnography on dream content was detectable.
CONCLUSIONS
We failed to detect a difference in dream content between patients with sleep apnea and controls. Further studies are required to determine whether these results indicate that the incorporation of respiratory events into dreams is absent in patients with sleep apnea or represents a bias due to the collection of dream content in the early morning hours.
Topics: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Dreams; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Polysomnography; Prospective Studies; Sleep Apnea Syndromes; Surveys and Questionnaires; Young Adult
PubMed: 29246266
DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.6876 -
Journal of Sleep Research Oct 2019Suppressing thoughts often leads to a "rebound" effect, both in waking cognition (thoughts) and in sleep cognition (dreams). Rebound may be influenced by the valence of...
Suppressing thoughts often leads to a "rebound" effect, both in waking cognition (thoughts) and in sleep cognition (dreams). Rebound may be influenced by the valence of the suppressed thought, but there is currently no research on the effects of valence on dream rebound. Further, the effects of dream rebound on subsequent emotional response to a suppressed thought have not been studied before. The present experiment aimed to investigate whether emotional valence of a suppressed thought affects dream rebound, and whether dream rebound subsequently influences subjective emotional response to the suppressed thought. Participants (N = 77) were randomly assigned to a pleasant or unpleasant thought suppression condition, suppressed their target thought for 5 min pre-sleep every evening, reported the extent to which they successfully suppressed the thought, and reported their dreams every morning for 7 days. It was found that unpleasant thoughts were more prone to dream rebound than pleasant thoughts. There was no effect of valence on the success or failure of suppression during wakefulness. Dream rebound and successful suppression were each found to have beneficial effects for subjective emotional response to both pleasant and unpleasant thoughts. The results may lend support for an emotion-processing theory of dream function.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Dreams; Emotions; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Young Adult
PubMed: 30859702
DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12827 -
Consciousness and Cognition Jul 2024Some dissociative experiences may be related, in part, to REM intrusion into waking consciousness. If so, some aspects of dream content may be associated with daytime...
Some dissociative experiences may be related, in part, to REM intrusion into waking consciousness. If so, some aspects of dream content may be associated with daytime dissociative experiences. We tested the hypothesis that some types of dream content would predict daytime dissociative symptomology. As part of a longitudinal study of the impact of dreams on everyday behavior we administered a battery of survey instruments to 219 volunteers. Assessments included the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), along with other measures known to be related to either REM intrusion effects or dissociative experiences. We also collected dream reports and sleep measures across a two-week period from a subgroup of the individuals in the baseline group. Of this subgroup we analyzed two different subsamples; 24 individuals with dream recall for at least half the nights in the two-week period; and 30 individuals who wore the DREEM Headband which captured measures of sleep architecture. In addition to using multiple regression analyses to quantify associations between DES and REM intrusion and dream content variables we used a split half procedure to create high vs low DES groups and then compared groups across all measures. Participants in the high DES group evidenced significantly greater nightmare distress scores, REM Behavior Disorder scores, paranormal beliefs, lucid dreams, and sleep onset times. Validated measures of dreamed first person perspective and overall dream coherence in a time series significantly predicted overall DES score accounting for 26% of the variance in dissociation. Dream phenomenology and coherence of the dreamed self significantly predicts dissociative symptomology as an individual trait. REM intrusion may be one source of dissociative experiences. Attempts to ameliorate dissociative symptoms or to treat nightmare distress should consider the stability of dream content as a viable indicator of dissociative tendencies.
Topics: Humans; Dreams; Dissociative Disorders; Adult; Female; Male; Young Adult; Longitudinal Studies; Middle Aged; Sleep, REM; Adolescent
PubMed: 38821030
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2024.103708 -
The Psychiatric Clinics of North America Dec 1987Nightmares--disturbances of dreaming sleep experienced at some point in time by most patients--are often seen in adults as a consequence of physical or emotional trauma.... (Review)
Review
Nightmares--disturbances of dreaming sleep experienced at some point in time by most patients--are often seen in adults as a consequence of physical or emotional trauma. The presence of nightmares on a chronic basis in adult life may reflect specific personality characteristics and may define a population at risk for other psychiatric disturbances. Treatment, if indicated, may include psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, with the regimen determined by the patient's specific history and symptoms.
Topics: Adult; Antidepressive Agents; Child; Diagnosis, Differential; Dreams; Female; Humans; Male; Mental Disorders; Monitoring, Physiologic; Psychotherapy
PubMed: 3332324
DOI: No ID Found -
British Journal of Hospital Medicine... Aug 2021The idea of patients drinking, eating and mobilising (DrEaMing) at 24 hours postoperatively is being used as a marker of functional recovery. This marker of recovery and...
The idea of patients drinking, eating and mobilising (DrEaMing) at 24 hours postoperatively is being used as a marker of functional recovery. This marker of recovery and quality is explored in this article.
Topics: Dreams; Humans
PubMed: 34431338
DOI: 10.12968/hmed.2021.0242 -
International Journal of Environmental... Jan 2021Despite the increasing interest in sleep and dream-related processes of emotion regulation, their reflection into waking and dream emotional experience remains unclear....
Despite the increasing interest in sleep and dream-related processes of emotion regulation, their reflection into waking and dream emotional experience remains unclear. We have previously described a discontinuity between wakefulness and dreaming, with a prevalence of positive emotions in wakefulness and negative emotions during sleep. Here we aim to investigate whether this profile may be affected by poor sleep quality. Twenty-three 'Good Sleepers' (GS) and 27 'Poor Sleepers' (PS), identified through the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) cut-off score, completed three forms of the modified Differential Emotions Scale, assessing, respectively, the frequency of 22 emotions over the past 2 weeks, their intensity during dreaming and during the previous day. The ANOVA revealed a different pattern of emotionality between groups: GS showed high positive emotionality in wakefulness (both past 2 weeks and 24 h) with a significant shift to negative emotionality in dreams, while PS showed evenly distributed emotional valence across all three conditions. No significant regression model emerged between waking and dream affect. In the frame of recent hypotheses on the role of dreaming in emotion regulation, our findings suggest that the different day/night expression of emotions between groups depends on a relative impairment of sleep-related processes of affect regulation in poor sleepers. Moreover, these results highlight the importance of including sleep quality assessments in future dream studies.
Topics: Dreams; Emotions; Sleep; Sleep, REM; Wakefulness
PubMed: 33430454
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18020431