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Assessing the Dream-Lag Effect for REM and NREM Stage 2 Dreams

Mark Blagrove Orcid Logo, Nathalie C Fouquet, Josephine A Henley-Einion, Edward F Pace-Schott, Anna C Davies, Jennifer L Neuschaffer, Oliver H Turnbull

PLoS ONE, Volume: 6, Issue: 10, Start page: e26708

Swansea University Author: Mark Blagrove Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1371/journal.pone.0026708

Abstract

This study investigates evidence, from dream reports, for memory consolidation during sleep. It is well-known that events andmemories from waking life can be incorporated into dreams. These incorporations can be a literal replication of what occurredin waking life, or, more often, they can be partia...

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Published in: PLoS ONE
ISSN: 1932-6203
Published: San Francisco PLoS 2011
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa9315
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Abstract: This study investigates evidence, from dream reports, for memory consolidation during sleep. It is well-known that events andmemories from waking life can be incorporated into dreams. These incorporations can be a literal replication of what occurredin waking life, or, more often, they can be partial or indirect. Two types of temporal relationship have been found tocharacterize the time of occurrence of a daytime event and the reappearance or incorporation of its features in a dream. Thesetemporal relationships are referred to as the day-residue or immediate incorporation effect, where there is the reappearance offeatures from events occurring on the immediately preceding day, and the dream-lag effect, where there is the reappearanceof features from events occurring 5–7 days prior to the dream. Previous work on the dream-lag effect has used spontaneoushome recalled dream reports, which can be from Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (REM) and from non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep(NREM). This study addresses whether the dream-lag effect occurs only for REM sleep dreams, or for both REM and NREM stage2 (N2) dreams. 20 participants kept a daily diary for over a week before sleeping in the sleep laboratory for 2 nights. REM andN2 dreams collected in the laboratory were transcribed and each participant rated the level of correspondence between everydream report and every diary record. The dream-lag effect was found for REM but not N2 dreams. Further analysis indicatedthat this result was not due to N2 dream reports being shorter, in terms of number of words, than the REM dream reports.These results provide evidence for a 7-day sleep-dependent non-linear memory consolidation process that is specific to REMsleep, and accord with proposals for the importance of REM sleep to emotional memory consolidation.
Item Description: .
Keywords: sleep; dream; memory; learning; REM sleep
College: Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
Issue: 10
Start Page: e26708

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