Sleep Deprivation And Its Effects On Dream Recalling

Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli. In medicine, a chronic disease is a disease that is long-lasting or recurrent. The term chronic describes the course of the disease, or its rate of onset and development. A chronic course is distinguished from a recurrent course; recurrent diseases relapse repeatedly, with periods of remission. In medicine, an acute disease is a disease with either or both of a rapid onset. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the effects of acute total sleep deprivation and chronic partial sleep restriction. The study investigated the effect of one night of sleep deprivation on dream recall at morning awakening after recovery sleep. Forty healthy subjects were studied after adaptation (A) and baseline nights (B), and a recovery (R) night following 40h of prolonged wakefulness. Parallel to the well-known recovery sleep changes (slow-wave sleep – SWS – rebound, decreased number of awakenings and of REM sleep amount), an almost complete abolition of dream recall was found, with an around 75% decrease with respect to the adaptation and baseline nights. The number of dreams recalled by those subjects with successful recall (REC) did not significantly differ between nights. Moreover, gender and sleep stage at awakening did not affect either the proportion of REC subjects or the number of dreams recalled by REC subjects during each night. Finally, the drastic impairment of dream recall after R night was associated to a larger increase of SWS and a shorter REM sleep duration.

De Gennaro, L., Marzano, C., Moroni, F., Curcio, G., Ferrara, M., & Cipolli, C. (2010). Recovery sleep after sleep deprivation almost completely abolishes dream recall. Behavioural Brain Research, 206(2), 293-298. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2009.09.030