Nightmares are not always linked to past trauma.
One of the best psychology research prove the actual
cause of Nightmares.
There is a popular
misconception out there about what causes repetitive nightmares. Most people
seem to think that frequent nightmares are caused by some sort of emotional
trauma or haunted past. But that is not really the case.
Certainly there is a class of nightmare sufferers who
have experienced trauma and their nightmares are clearly linked to that trauma.
But there is another class of sufferers who do not fit the stereotype.
There are many people who experience frequent nightmares
who have no special histories of trauma –emotional or otherwise. So we need to
look at other potential causative factors.
Nightmares: The
science and solution of those frightening visions during sleep. Westport, CT:
Praeger Perspectives ), I suggested that one overlooked factor was the balance
between REM and NREM sleep amounts the individual experiences on a nightly
basis.
The normal balance between REM and slow wave NREM sleep
(SWS) was modeled by Borbély and Wirz-Justice back in 1982. Their model has
been widely successful in capturing the need to catch-up on lost sleep when the
balance between REM and NREM is upset due tosleeplessness/insomnia or some
other perturbation.
Normal sleep is under homeostatic control and requires a
balance between REM/NREM sleep amount and intensity. In the
Borbely/Wirz-Justice ‘two-process’ model of sleep regulation a sleep need
process (Process S) increases during waking (or sleep deprivation) and
decreases during sleep. This part of the model indexes restorative aspects of
sleep. Process S is proposed to interact with input from the light-regulated
circadian system (Process C) that is independent of sleep and wakefulness
rhythms. Slow-wave delta activity (SWA) is taken as an indicator of the time
course of Process S because SWA is known to correlate with arousal thresholds
and to markedly increase during the previous waking period and during the
rebound period after sleep deprivation in all mammals studied. Once a threshold
value of Process S is reached (i.e., once the appropriate amount and intensity
of SWS is reached), Process C will be activated. Simulations using the model’s
assumptions show that the homeostatic component of sleep falls in a sigmoidal
manner during waking and rises in a saturating exponential manner during sleep.
The two-process model predicts that both REM and NREM are
under homeostatic control and mutually inhibit one another’s expression. Too
much REM is associated with reductions in SWS and vice versa. Borbély’s model
tells us how sleep intensity is adjusted depending on sleep need. If an animal
goes without sleep for too long the urge to sleep builds up and once sleep is
initiated the animal spends an inordinate amount of time in SWS and only after
that is accomplished is REM sleep made up.
In the case of nightmares, the available data suggest
that there is too much REM and too little SWS and thus the REM/SWS balance is
lost. A recent report from a Hungarian group in the European Archives
ofPsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (Simor P, Horváth K, Gombos F, Takács
KP, Bódizs R.; Disturbed dreaming and sleep quality: altered sleep architecture
in subjects with frequent nightmares. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2012
Apr 24. [Epub ahead of print]) the authors investigated the sleep architecture
of 17 individuals with frequent nightmares and 23 control subjects. Now it is
important to note that these data are extremely valuable because it is so hard
to get polysomnographic studies on frequent nightmare sufferers for a variety
of reasons.
In the Simor et al study the authors claim that they
found that the subjects with nightmares evidenced a reduced amount of slow wave
sleep, increased nocturnal awakenings, and longer durations of REM sleep (“that
was mediated by heightened negative affect”). I have not yet read the paper so
the above summary is based on the abstract. The basic finding however is clear:
people with frequent nightmares have a measureable decrease in slow wave sleep
and a increase in REM sleep and the latter was related with negative affect.
Whether or not one can argue that the imbalance between
SWS and REM in nightmare sufferers is causative or contributory it may be that
one avenue of treatment for frequent nightmares is to restore the REM/NREM
balance. That can be done pharmacologically or sometimes merely by shifting
sleep schedules (i.e. treating the nightmare disorder as a disorder of
circadian rhythms) and observing strict sleep hygiene habits. I do not wish to
make things sound so simple but there may be a small number of nightmare
sufferers who respond to these simple interventions.
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its Amazing...
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