RESEARCH ARTICLE
The association between sleep disturbance and nightmares: Temporal dynamics of nightmare occurrence and sleep architecture in the home
John Balch,
Rachel Raider,
Chanel Reed,
Patrick McNamara,
Corresponding Author
John Balch
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Center for Mind and Culture, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Correspondence
John Balch, Department of Psychology, Center for Mind and Culture, National University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Contribution: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Resources, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Software, Validation, Visualization
Search for more papers by this authorRachel Raider
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Contribution: Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Resources, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorChanel Reed
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Contribution: Investigation, Data curation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Project administration
Search for more papers by this authorPatrick McNamara
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Contribution: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition
Search for more papers by this authorJohn Balch,
Rachel Raider,
Chanel Reed,
Patrick McNamara,
Corresponding Author
John Balch
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Center for Mind and Culture, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Correspondence
John Balch, Department of Psychology, Center for Mind and Culture, National University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Contribution: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Resources, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Software, Validation, Visualization
Search for more papers by this authorRachel Raider
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Contribution: Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Resources, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorChanel Reed
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Contribution: Investigation, Data curation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Project administration
Search for more papers by this authorPatrick McNamara
Department of Psychology, National University, San Diego, California, USA
Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Contribution: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition
Search for more papers by this authorSummary
We collected measures of sleep architecture and nightmares from participants (N = 61) wearing the DREEM 3 headband across 2 weeks of data collection to test the hypothesis that there are bidirectional links between insomnia (measured as sleep disturbance) and nightmare events. Nightmares were predicted by increased sleep disturbance the night before the nightmare, but not on the same night or 2 nights before. We also found that nightmare occurrences did not predict increased sleep disturbance on the same night or the following 2 nights, rather nightmares predicted increased sleep disturbance at the between-subjects level only. We suggest that nightmares are associated with an N3 sleep rebound on the night of the nightmare following a night of sleep disturbance.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
None.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data underlying this article will eventually be made available at the Open Science Framework site for Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Cognition. Readers should forward inquiries to the corresponding author (JB) in the meantime.
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