ArticleScientific reports2024
Evidence of an active role of dreaming in emotional memory processing shows that we dream to forget.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Distressing Dream Content Inventory: Development and Initial Validation in Acute Trauma Patients.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Trait and state predictors of the intensity of emotions experienced in everyday dreams: a multilevel approach.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Dream content and slow waves benefit prey against predator in a video game confrontation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The American dream: Election night dreams predict overnight change in feelings about the election and the future.PloS one · 2026Article
- Sleep disruption from inhalation of biomass smoke: a basis for coincident hypertension?Particle and fibre toxicology · 2025Article
- The cathartic dream: Using a large language model to study a new type of functional dream in healthy and clinical populations.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Does sleep change the emotional bias in memory in older adults?Neuropsychologia · 2025Article
- Investigating dreams by strategically presenting sounds during REM sleep to reactivate waking experiences.Neuropsychologia · 2025Article
- Association Between Dreams, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms Among Japanese Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study.Clocks & sleep · 2025Article
- REM refines and rescues memory representations: a new theory.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Review
- Experimentally inducing dreams of remote emotional memory.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Article
- Sleep on it: exploring the psychology of sleep amidst contemporary challenges.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sexual Dream Frequency and Self-Reported Cardiovascular Morbidity: Findings From the SLEEP Study.Missouri medicineArticle
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Dreaming is a universal human behavior that has inspired searches for meaning across many disciplines including art, psychology, religion, and politics, yet its function remains poorly understood. Given the suggested role of sleep in emotional memory processing, we investigated whether reported overnight dreaming and dream content are associated with sleep-dependent changes in emotional memory and reactivity, and whether dreaming plays an active or passive role. Participants completed an emotional picture task before and after a full night of sleep and they recorded the presence and content of their dreams upon waking in the morning. The results replicated the emotional memory trade-off (negative images maintained at the cost of neutral memories), but only in those who reported dreaming (Dream-Recallers), and not in Non-Dream-Recallers. Results also replicated sleep-dependent reductions in emotional reactivity, but only in Dream-Recallers, not in Non-Dream-Recallers. Additionally, the more positive the dream report, the more positive the next-day emotional reactivity is compared to the night before. These findings implicate an active role for dreaming in overnight emotional memory processing and suggest a mechanistic framework whereby dreaming may enhance salient emotional experiences via the forgetting of less relevant information.
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