ArticleJournal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine2019
Nightmare Severity Is Inversely Related to Frontal Brain Activity During Waking State Picture Viewing.
Article in Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Re-experiencing trauma: Occipital lobe resting-state functional connectivity in posttraumatic stress disorder.Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging · 2026Article
- The mediation effects of nightmares and depression between insomnia and suicidal ideation in young adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Altered parasympathetic activity during sleep and emotionally arousing wakefulness in frequent nightmare recallers.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Article
- Nightmare Distress as a Risk Factor for Suicide Among Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder.Nature and science of sleep · 2022Article
- Local Neuronal Synchronization in Frequent Nightmare Recallers and Healthy Controls: A Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Nightmare Disorder and Isolated Sleep Paralysis.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2021Review
- Frontal Brain Activity and Subjective Arousal During Emotional Picture Viewing in Nightmare Sufferers.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Article
- A Meaningful Step Toward Understanding the Cause and Impact of Nightmares.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
STUDY
objectivesGrowing evidence suggests that nightmares have considerable adverse effects on waking behavior, possibly by increasing post-sleep negative emotions. Dysphoric reactions to nightmares are one component of nightmare severity for which the neural correlates are unknown. Here, we investigate possible neural correlates of nightmare severity in a sample of individuals who frequently recall nightmares.
methodsOur principal measure of nightmare severity is nightmare distress as indexed by the Nightmare Distress Questionnaire (NDQ), and secondary measures are retrospective and prospective estimates of frequency of recalling dysphoric dreams (DD). We used high-resolution technetium 99m ethyl cysteinate dimer single photon emission computed tomography to assess regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) while 18 individuals who were frequent nightmare recallers viewed negative and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System. We correlated rCBF with NDQ scores and DD recall frequency estimates.
resultsNegative correlations were observed between NDQ scores and rCBF during negative picture viewing in bilateral insula and anterior cingulate, right medial frontal gyrus, bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right inferior frontal and precentral gyri, and bilateral putamen. Retrospective DD recall correlated with rCBF activity primarily in regions overlapping those related to NDQ scores. Prospective DD recall was only weakly related to rCBF. Results for the neutral condition overlapped partially with those for the negative condition; in particular, NDQ and retrospective DD recall were related to rCBF in medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate gyri.
conclusionsResults point to a possible overlap in brain mechanisms involved in nightmare dysphoria (during sleep) and distress (during wakefulness) among individuals who frequently recall nightmares. They provide partial support for a neurocognitive model of nightmares. COMMENTARY: A commentary on this article appears in this issue on page 179.
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