Nightmares are one of the most prevalent sleeping disorders in the world, the frequency of which increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, as several reports show. Now, it might be possible to tame these horrifying dreams using non-invasive techniques to manipulate our emotions, a new study shows.
A study conducted on 36 patients diagnosed with a nightmare disorder showed that a combination of two simple therapies can help reduce the frequency of these bad dreams to a large extent. The study was originally published in a Current Biology paper.
“There is a relationship between the types of emotions experienced in dreams and our emotional well-being,” psychiatrist Lampros Perogamvros of the Geneva University Hospitals and the University of Geneva in Switzerland explained in 2022 when the results of the study were published.
“Based on this observation, we had the idea that we could help people by manipulating emotions in their dreams.”
Taming nightmares with music and some manipulation of emotions
Many people globally suffer from nightmares, which are not just a few bad dreams. Nightmares are also associated with poor sleep quality, which then can lead to other health issues.
One reason for nightmares is poor sleep which can also increase anxiety, which in turn can result in insomnia. Hence, nightmares shouldn’t be ignored and must be dealt with at an early stage.
The two non-invasive methods introduced in the study were- imagery rehearsal therapy (IMT) and targeted memory reactivation (TMR).
In IMT, patients were asked to rewrite their most harrowing and frequent nightmares to give them a happy ending on paper and then “rehearse” that written story in their head, in an attempt to overwrite the nightmare.
This method helped to reduce the frequency and severity of nightmares, but the treatment is not effective for all patients.
To boost this method’s effectiveness, scientists introduced another method called- targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Based on a 2010 experiment, in this method, certain sounds associated with a certain stimulus are played while people are sleeping. It was observed that TMR helped in boosting the memory of that stimulus.
After having the study’s participants complete a dream and sleep diary for two weeks, the volunteers were all given a single IRT session.
Half of the group underwent a TMR session, creating a link between a positive version of their nightmares and a sound. The other half served as a control group, imagining a less horrific version of a nightmare without being exposed to positive sounds.
At the start of the study, the control group had, on average, 2.58 nightmares per week, and the TMR group had an average of 2.94 weekly nightmares. By the end of the study, the control group was down to 1.02 weekly nightmares, while the TMR group had dropped to just 0.19. Even more promising, the TMR group reported an increase in happy dreams.
At the three-month follow-up, nightmares had risen slightly in both groups, to 1.48 and 0.33 per week respectively. However, that is still an impressive reduction in the frequency of nightmares, the researchers said, suggesting that using TMR to support IRT results in a more effective treatment.
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“We observed a fast decrease of nightmares, together with dreams becoming emotionally more positive. For us, researchers and clinicians, these findings is very promising both for the study of emotional processing during sleep and for the development of new therapies,” Perogamvros said.
(With inputs from agencies)