Concordance between Two Measures of Dream Bizarreness

Levin, Ross; Livingston, Glenn

doi:10.2466/pms.1991.72.3.837

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 4 publications

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“…The first is the de novo conjunctions of features, many of which produce dream experience that seems bizarre, incongruous, or incompatible with waking life experience. Bizarreness is frequent in dreams (Kunzendorf et al, 1997;Levin & Livingston, 1991;Revonsuo & Salmivalli, 1995), and dreams are significantly more bizarre than waking daydreams (Kunzendorf et al, 1997). A widely accepted explanation for bizarreness is still lacking.…”

Section: Memory Element Recombinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model.

Levin

Nielsen

2007

Psychological Bulletin

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518

557

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Nightmares are common, occurring weekly in 4%-10% of the population, and are associated with female gender, younger age, increased stress, psychopathology, and dispositional traits. Nightmare pathogenesis remains unexplained, as do differences between nontraumatic and posttraumatic nightmares (for those with or without posttraumatic stress disorder) and relations with waking functioning. No models adequately explain nightmares nor have they been reconciled with recent developments in cognitive neuroscience, fear acquisition, and emotional memory. The authors review the recent literature and propose a conceptual framework for understanding a spectrum of dysphoric dreaming. Central to this is the notion that variations in nightmare prevalence, frequency, severity, and psychopathological comorbidity reflect the influence of both affect load, a consequence of daily variations in emotional pressure, and affect distress, a disposition to experience events with distressing, highly reactive emotions. In a cross-state, multilevel model of dream function and nightmare production, the authors integrate findings on emotional memory structures and the brain correlates of emotion.Keywords: nightmares, distress, neurophysiology of fear memory, posttraumatic stress disorder, psychopathology Nightmares are the most common form of disturbed dreaming. Vivid, with emotions escalating at times to the brink of terror, they are manifestations of the dramatic autonomic and cognitive fluctuations that can arise during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and, under certain circumstances, during Stage 2 sleep. Nightmares can be simple and benign or so emotionally severe that they beg for comparison with psychotic episodes (C. Fisher, Byrne, Edwards, & Kahn, 1970;Hartmann, 1984;Sullivan, 1962). Occasional nightmares are almost ubiquitous in the general population. However, frequent distressing nightmares are more common than generally thought, affecting 4%-10% of individuals by conservative estimates. Nightmares are also extremely common following trauma exposure. Posttraumatic nightmares may depict traumarelated content and, in cases of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), may at times replicate the trauma with great distress (for review, see Mellman & Pigeon, 2005).There has been a proliferation of experimental work on posttraumatic and nontraumatic nightmares in the past 15 years, the vast majority of which has examined the psychopathological correlates of individuals with frequent nightmares. Furthermore, recent advances in neuroscience have greatly expanded our understanding of dreaming and related brain functions (Maquet, 2000;Maquet et al., 2000) as well as the pathogenic mechanisms implicated in fear conditioning and the development of PTSD (LeDoux, 2000;Ohman & Mineka, 2001). However, despite the clear implications of these developments for understanding nightmares, there are still no comprehensive models of nightmare etiology and no conceptual frameworks for understanding the link between posttraumatic and nontraumatic nightm...

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Section: Memory Element Recombinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model.

Levin

Nielsen

2007

Psychological Bulletin

Self Cite

518

557

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Disturbed Dreaming and Emotion Dysregulation

Levin

Fireman

Nielsen

2010

Sleep Medicine Clinics

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The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming

Revonsuo¹

2000

Behav Brain Sci

522

421

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Several theories claim that dreaming is a random by-product of REM sleep physiology and that it does not serve any natural function. Phenomenal dream content, however, is not as disorganized as such views imply. The form and content of dreams is not random but organized and selective: during dreaming, the brain constructs a complex model of the world in which certain types of elements, when compared to waking life, are underrepresented whereas others are over represented. Furthermore, dream content is consistently and powerfully modulated by certain types of waking experiences. On the basis of this evidence, I put forward the hypothesis that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events, and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance. To evaluate this hypothesis, we need to consider the original evolutionary context of dreaming and the possible traces it has left in the dream content of the present human population. In the ancestral environment human life was short and full of threats. Any behavioral advantage in dealing with highly dangerous events would have increased the probability of reproductive success. A dream-production mechanism that tends to select threatening waking events and simulate them over and over again in various combinations would have been valuable for the development and maintenance of threat-avoidance skills. Empirical evidence from normative dream content, children's dreams, recurrent dreams, nightmares, post traumatic dreams, and the dreams of hunter-gatherers indicates that our dream-production mechanisms are in fact specialized in the simulation of threatening events, and thus provides support to the threat simulation hypothesis of the function of dreaming.

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Concordance between Two Measures of Dream Bizarreness

Cited by 8 publications

References 4 publications

Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model.

Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model.

Disturbed Dreaming and Emotion Dysregulation

The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming

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