REM sleep behavior disorder, or parasomnia, affects more than 80 million people worldwide. The disorder causes sufferers to experience nightmare-like violent dreams. Sufferers act on their dreams while sleeping, often resulting in violent or dangerous sleep behaviors and injuries. Researchers propose new guidelines, including medical and pharmacological recommendations, to help curb symptoms of parasomnia and promote healthier sleep.
Rehearsing positive versions of frequent nightmares before sleep and playing noises associated with positive daytime experiences during sleep helps reduce nightmare frequency, a new study reports.
Middle-aged people who experience at least one nightmare a week are four times more likely to experience cognitive decline during the following decade. Older adults who experience weekly nightmares are twice as likely to develop dementia. The association is much stronger for men than women.
Eye movements that occur during REM sleep aren't random. They appear to coordinate what's happening during dreaming. The findings shed new light on what happens when we dream, and how our imagination works.
Study uncovers how splines, a newly identified pattern of rhythmic communication between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, improve brain communication as a result of dreaming and running.
While popular culture encourages us all to "dream big", researchers say it is important to ground those dreams with a dose of reality.
Visual scanpaths during memory retrieval tasks were associated with the quality of the memory. Researchers say the replay of a sequence of eye movements helps boost memory reconstruction.
Researchers explore how bilingualism and multilingualism influence the language we dream in.
Dreams that appear to be simultaneously realistic and bizarre help our brains learn and extract generic concepts from previous experiences, a new study reports.
REM sleep significantly increases the flow of red blood cells through the brain's capillaries.
Two-thirds of people report experiencing recurring dreams, especially during times of stress. Researchers evaluate how the phenomenon occurs, and factors that contribute to recurring dreams.
Effectively, mammals "dream" about the world they are about to experience before they are able to open their eyes and possibly before they are born. Researchers found before a newborn mouse opened its eyes, its retinal waves flow in a pattern that mimics the activity which would occur as the animal moves through the environment.