Camaioni Milena, Scarpelli Serena, Alfonsi Valentina, Gorgoni Maurizio, Calzolari Rossana, De Bartolo Mina, Mangiaruga Anastasia, Couyoumdjian Alessandro, De Gennaro Luigi
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Body and Action Lab, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Via Ardeatina 306, 00179 Rome, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2024 May 11;14(5):486. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14050486.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased symptoms of stress and anxiety and induced changes in sleep quality, dream activity, and parasomnia episodes. It has been shown that stressful factors and/or bad sleep habits can affect parasomnia behaviors. However, investigations on how COVID-19 has affected sleep, dreams, and episode frequency in parasomnias are rare. The current study focuses on the impact of the pandemic on a specific parasomnia characterized by speech production (sleep talking, ST).
We selected 27 participants with frequent ST episodes (STs) during the pandemic and compared them with 27 participants with frequent STs from a previous study conducted during a pre-pandemic period. All participants performed home monitoring through sleep logs and recorded their nocturnal STs for one week.
We observed a higher frequency of STs in the pandemic group. Moreover, STs were related to the emotional intensity of dreams, independent of the pandemic condition. The pandemic was associated with lower bizarreness of dreams in the pandemic group. There were no differences in sleep variables between the two groups.
Overall, these results suggest a stressful effect of COVID-19 on the frequency of STs. Both the pandemic and the frequency of STs affect qualitative characteristics of dreams in this population.
新冠疫情增加了压力和焦虑症状，并导致睡眠质量、梦境活动和异态睡眠发作发生变化。研究表明，压力因素和/或不良睡眠习惯会影响异态睡眠行为。然而，关于新冠疫情如何影响异态睡眠中的睡眠、梦境及发作频率的研究却很少。当前研究聚焦于疫情对一种以言语产生为特征的特定异态睡眠（梦呓，ST）的影响。
我们选取了27名在疫情期间频繁出现梦呓发作（STs）的参与者，并将他们与27名在疫情前阶段进行的一项先前研究中频繁出现梦呓的参与者进行比较。所有参与者通过睡眠日志进行家庭监测，并记录他们一周的夜间梦呓情况。
我们观察到疫情组的梦呓发作频率更高。此外，梦呓发作与梦境中的情绪强度相关，与疫情状况无关。疫情与疫情组中梦境较低的怪诞程度有关。两组之间的睡眠变量没有差异。
总体而言，这些结果表明新冠疫情对梦呓发作频率有压力影响。疫情和梦呓发作频率都会影响该人群梦境的质性特征。
