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End-of-Life in Oncologic Patients' Dream Content.

ABSTRACT: Both non-rapid eye movements and rapid eye movements sleep facilitate the strengthening of newly encoded memory traces, and dream content reflects this process. Numerous studies evaluated the impact of diseases on dream content, with particular reference to cancer, and reported the presence of issues related to death, negative emotions, pain and illness. This study investigates death and illness experiences in 13 consecutive patients with sarcoma compared to paired controls, early after diagnosis, evaluating dream contents, fear of death, mood and anxiety, distress, and severity of disease perception (perceived and communicated). Ten patients and 10 controls completed the study. Dream contents were significantly different between patients and normative data (DreamSat) and patients and controls (higher presence of negative emotions, low familiar settings and characters and no success involving the dreamer). Illness and death were present in 57% of patients' dreams (0% among controls), but no differences emerged between patients and controls in regard to anxiety and depression, distress and fear of death, even if the severity of illness was correctly perceived. The appearance of emotional elements in dreams and the absence of conscious verbalization of distress and/or depressive or anxious symptoms by patients could be ascribed to the time required for mnestic elaboration (construction/elaboration phase) during sleep.

SUBMITTER: Cicolin A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7464967 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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End-of-Life in Oncologic Patients' Dream Content.

Cicolin Alessandro A Boffano Michele M Beccuti Guglielmo G Piana Raimondo R Giordano Alessandra A

Brain sciences 20200801 8

Both non-rapid eye movements and rapid eye movements sleep facilitate the strengthening of newly encoded memory traces, and dream content reflects this process. Numerous studies evaluated the impact of diseases on dream content, with particular reference to cancer, and reported the presence of issues related to death, negative emotions, pain and illness. This study investigates death and illness experiences in 13 consecutive patients with sarcoma compared to paired controls, early after diagnosi ...[more]

PMID: 32752165

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Project description:Can dreams reveal insight into our cognitive abilities and aptitudes (i.e., "human intelligence")? The relationship between dream production and trait-like cognitive abilities is the foundation of several long-standing theories on the neurocognitive and cognitive-psychological basis of dreaming. However, direct experimental evidence is sparse and remains contentious. On the other hand, recent research has provided compelling evidence demonstrating a link between dream content and new learning, suggesting that dreams reflect memory processing during sleep. It remains to be investigated whether the extent of learning-related dream incorporation (i.e., the semantic similarity between waking experiences and dream content) is related to inter-individual differences in cognitive abilities. The relationship between pre-post sleep memory performance improvements and learning-related dream incorporation was investigated (N = 24) to determine if this relationship could be explained by inter-individual differences in intellectual abilities (e.g., reasoning, short term memory (STM), and verbal abilities). The extent of dream incorporation using a novel and objective method of dream content analysis, employed a computational linguistic approach to measure the semantic relatedness between verbal reports describing the experience on a spatial (e.g., maze navigation) or a motor memory task (e.g., tennis simulator) with subsequent hypnagogic reverie dream reports and waking "daydream" reports, obtained during a daytime nap opportunity. Consistent with previous studies, the extent to which something new was learned was related (r = 0.47) to how richly these novel experiences were incorporated into the content of dreams. This was significant for early (the first 4 dream reports) but not late dreams (the last 4 dream reports). Notably, here, we show for the first time that the extent of this incorporation for early dreams was related (r = 0.41) to inter-individual differences in reasoning abilities. On the other hand, late dream incorporation was related (r = 0.46) to inter-individual differences in verbal abilities. There was no relationship between performance improvements and intellectual abilities, and thus, inter-individual differences in cognitive abilities did not mediate the relationship between performance improvements and dream incorporation; suggesting a direct relationship between reasoning abilities and dream incorporation. This study provides the first evidence that learning-related dream production is related to inter-individual differences in cognitive abilities.

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End-of-Life in Oncologic Patients' Dream Content.

Publications

End-of-Life in Oncologic Patients' Dream Content.

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