Untroubled sleep could be a dream for people who suffer from recurring nightmares. Neuroscientists have now demonstrated that they can use a small experiment to help people get rid of bad dreams.
A memory-boosting technique, which enhances the standard treatment for nightmare disorders, has been shown to reduce average weekly nightmares in a small number of people. From three to nearly zeroOnline report by researchers, October 27, 2007. Current Biology.
“The fact that they could actually make a big difference in the frequency of those nightmares is huge,” says Gina Poe, a neuroscientist at UCLA who wasn’t involved in the study.
People with nightmare disorder do not fear the monsters beneath their bed but they fear the monsters in the dreams. Frequent, frightening dreams can disrupt sleep and affect your well-being during the day. IRT, or imagery rehearsal therapy is the most effective treatment for nightmare disorder. This therapy involves patients creating nightmares and mentally rehearsing the story while awake. The treatment reduces nightmares, but it fails to work for almost a third.
To boost IRT’s power, neuroscientist Sophie Schwartz of the University of Geneva and her colleagues leveraged a learning technique called targeted memory reactivation, or TMR. The technique involves a person focusing on learning something, while a sound plays. The same cue plays during sleep. It is possible to experience the cue while you sleep. Important for memory storageThe associated memory may be reactivated and strengthened by this treatmentSN: 10/3/19).
Researchers randomly assigned 36 people suffering from nightmare disorder IRT training. Half of the participants were then asked to practice their nightmares in silence. The other half practiced while the TMR cue was played for a short time, alternating between a piano chord and silence, every 10 seconds, for five minutes.
Participants practiced IRT for two weeks. They also kept a daily dream diary. While they slept, a headband outfitted with sensors recorded their brains’ electrical activity and tracked their sleep stages. The headband played the music as a dream soundtrack. It sounds off every 10 sec during rapid eye movement, which is the stage of sleep associated with dreaming. All participants heard the sound, but only half of them had associated the sound with the new scenario they were learning during IRT training.
TMR was almost able to end nightmares for people who had been trained in the chord. It brought the weekly average from three nightmares down to 0.2 and encouraged better dreams. Even though the group that received only IRT had a better experience, they still experienced one nightmare per week.
The TMR-IRT combination also had more staying power after three months, with that group’s average rising only slightly from about 0.2 to 0.3 nightmares a week, while the IRT-only group’s jumped to 1.5.
To test the generalizability of this treatment combination, larger studies are needed. The study included a small group of young adults between 20 and 35 years old with nightmare disorder. They were also free from any other mental disorders. The study also didn’t compare IRT and TMR to no treatment, although the researchers write that previous studies have already shown how effective IRT can be.
If a TMR-IRT combo proves as strong in future research, it still has a way to go before it’s widely accessible. The commercially available sleep trackers that are worn in rings and watches have not been able to differentiate between stages of sleep as well as the brain-monitoring tools.
Poe said that even with these limitations, the results were encouraging. She suggested that future studies could be done to see if the TMR-IRT combination can benefit people with disabilities. Post-traumatic Stress DisorderTraumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD, is a condition where the nightmares of traumatic events are rehashed.SN 9/12/14).
That’s something Schwartz wants to try. “I’m not sure we’ll succeed with these particular patients,” she says. “But if we do, this would be a really important addition to the methods we have for treating PTSD.”
