Dreams can be strange at times. But the worst are the recurring nightmares where the same terrible dream reappears over and over every night. Some of the most frequent nightmares include being stalked, finding ourselves naked in public, in the middle of a natural disaster, losing a tooth or forgetting something very important. Scientists have now found an antidote to these and similar nightmares.
It is not yet clear to science exactly why people have nightmares. Some scholars believe they mean nothing more than to reveal potential stress areas in our lives. However, other experts claim that
Frequent negative dreams indicate unresolved personal conflicts.
However, the truth is that regardless of their causes, nightmares that recur night after night can be very stressful, which often make us wake up in the middle of the night, which also affects the quality of our sleep. According to statistics, 4% of adults may suffer from chronic nightmares at any given time.
In such cases, therapists often teach patients to reframe their nightmares and try to turn them into positive, pleasurable versions.
Alternating currentcurrent biology In a new study published in a scientific journal, Swiss researchers went even further: Volunteers experiencing nightmares were given a wireless headband while they slept, which made a sound associated with a positive daytime experience, so to speak, to “pull” the patience out of the nightmare into the dream. “It led him to more positive territory.”
We can find a connection between the types of feelings we feel in dreams and our emotional well-being said Lampros Perogamvros, a psychiatrist at the University of Geneva Hospitals and the University of Geneva Sleep Laboratory, and lead author of the book. ZME Science for an online scholarly journal. Based on this observation, we came up with the idea that we can help people by manipulating their feelings in their dreams.
He added: “This study demonstrates how we can reduce the number of emotionally very strong and especially negative dreams in patients who suffer from nightmares.”
Perogamvros and colleagues recruited a total of 36 patients who reported chronic nightmares. They were divided into two groups: in the first, the volunteers did not receive any support, but in the second group, through an experiment for a whole day, they learned how to associate the positive version of the nightmare with a specific sound. Patients in the intervention group had to wear a headband that played sound at regular intervals during REM sleep – the phase of sleep associated with dreaming and memory enhancement – for two weeks.
In the placebo group, the severity and frequency of recurrent nightmares decreased, and
Patients who wore the headband had fewer nightmares even three months after the operation.
In fact, they reported more joyful dreams.
We were positively surprised by how well the participants tolerated the testing procedures, for example, they performed an experimental photo therapy each day and wore a sleep headband at night.Perogamvros noted. We noticed a rapid decrease in nightmares, while dreams became more emotionally positive.
He added: “These results are very promising, both for processing emotions during sleep and for the development of new treatments.”
