ReviewSleep medicine reviews2016
A new view of "dream enactment" in REM sleep behavior disorder.
Review in Sleep medicine reviews, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Twitching in sleeping premature infants provides a sensitive behavioral assay of early motor control.iScience · 2026Article
- REM-sleep twitching in adults and the maintenance of specialized sensorimotor systems.Current biology : CB · 2026Review
- Twitching in sleeping premature infants provides a sensitive behavioral assay of early motor control.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Dream Enactment Behaviour in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Buried Treasure? Overlooked and Newly Discovered Evolutionary Contributions to Human Brain Diseases.Annals of neurology · 2025Review
- Cessation of dream enacting behavior in REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) following posterior cerebral artery infarction: implications for dreaming and RBD mechanisms.Journal of neurology · 2025Article
- New strategies for the cognitive science of dreaming.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2024Review
- The new science of sleep: From cells to large-scale societies.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Consciousness and sleep.Neuron · 2024Review
- REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and Its Possible Prodromes in General Population: Prevalence, Polysomnography Findings, and Associated Factors.Neurology · 2023Article
- Wide-spread brain activation and reduced CSF flow during avian REM sleep.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Sleep, plasticity, and sensory neurodevelopment.Neuron · 2022Review
- Rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder: Past, present, and future.Journal of sleep research · 2022Review
- Abnormal rapid eye movement sleep atonia control in chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.Sleep · 2022Article
- REM sleep behavior disorder with predominant nightmares in a patient with ischemic pontine lesions.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2022Article
- Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder-like Symptoms Due to Arousal Responses Associated with Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea-hypopnea.Internal medicine (Tokyo, Japan) · 2021Article
- How deep is the rift between conscious states in sleep and wakefulness? Spontaneous experience over the sleep-wake cycle.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Do all mammals dream?The Journal of comparative neurology · 2020Review
- Spatiotemporal organization of myoclonic twitching in sleeping human infants.Developmental psychobiology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Patients with REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) exhibit increased muscle tone and exaggerated myoclonic twitching during REM sleep. In addition, violent movements of the limbs, and complex behaviors that can sometimes appear to involve the enactment of dreams, are associated with RBD. These behaviors are widely thought to result from a dysfunction involving atonia-producing neural circuitry in the brainstem, thereby unmasking cortically generated dreams. Here we scrutinize the assumptions that led to this interpretation of RBD. In particular, we challenge the assumption that motor cortex produces twitches during REM sleep, thus calling into question the related assumption that motor cortex is primarily responsible for all of the pathological movements of RBD. Moreover, motor cortex is not even necessary to produce complex behavior; for example, stimulation of some brainstem structures can produce defensive and aggressive behaviors in rats and monkeys that are strikingly similar to those reported in human patients with RBD. Accordingly, we suggest an interpretation of RBD that focuses increased attention on the brainstem as a source of the pathological movements and that considers sensory feedback from moving limbs as an important influence on the content of dream mentation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.