Palmieri Jessica, Elce Valentina, Schönauer Monika
Institute of Psychology, Neuropsychology, University of Freiburg, Engelbergerstraße 41, 79106, Freiburg Im Breisgau, Germany.
MoMiLab Research Unit, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Piazza San Francesco, 19, 55100, Lucca, Italy.
Neuropsychologia. 2025 Aug 11;218:109248. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109248.
Emotional processing is a crucial adaptive function. Research suggests that sleep, particularly rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, may have a role in processing the emotional load of past events. Notably, dream experiences may offer insight into this nighttime process. Some studies have reported increased emotionality in dreams as the night progresses, possibly reflecting ongoing emotional processing in the sleeping brain. However, findings on how dream affect evolves throughout the night remain mixed. In this study, we investigated how emotional intensity in conscious experiences during sleep changes across the night and sleep stages. Participants (N = 20) were subjected to a multiple awakening paradigm, where they were awakened 4-5 times throughout the night and asked to recall their dreams (N = 61). Additionally, they rated the emotional intensity of their experiences using a structured cued questionnaire. Emotional intensity in dreams increased significantly throughout the night, with late-night dreams being more emotional than dreams collected during earlier sleep. Contrary to our expectation, this increase was not driven by dream reports obtained from REM sleep awakenings. Moreover, late-night dream reports were also significantly longer than those from early sleep, yet the length of the dream reports did not correlate with their emotional intensity. This suggests that the emotionality of dreams is not directly linked to the ability to recall the dream or its narrative complexity. Instead, it could be driven by emotional processes occurring independently throughout the night, or by other factors that regulate our access to dream experiences and their emotional content.
情绪加工是一项至关重要的适应性功能。研究表明，睡眠，尤其是快速眼动（REM）睡眠，可能在处理过去事件的情绪负荷方面发挥作用。值得注意的是，梦境体验可能为这一夜间过程提供见解。一些研究报告称，随着夜晚的推进，梦境中的情绪性会增加，这可能反映了睡眠中大脑正在进行的情绪加工。然而，关于梦境影响如何在整个夜间演变的研究结果仍然参差不齐。在本研究中，我们调查了睡眠期间有意识体验中的情绪强度在整个夜晚和睡眠阶段是如何变化的。参与者（N = 20）接受了多次唤醒范式，即他们在整个晚上被唤醒4 - 5次，并被要求回忆他们的梦境（N = 61）。此外，他们使用结构化提示问卷对自己体验的情绪强度进行评分。梦境中的情绪强度在整个晚上显著增加，深夜的梦境比早期睡眠期间收集的梦境更具情绪性。与我们的预期相反，这种增加并非由从快速眼动睡眠唤醒中获得的梦境报告所驱动。此外，深夜的梦境报告也明显比早期睡眠的报告更长，然而梦境报告的长度与其情绪强度并无关联。这表明梦境的情绪性并非直接与回忆梦境的能力或其叙事复杂性相关。相反，它可能是由整个晚上独立发生的情绪过程驱动的，或者是由其他调节我们获取梦境体验及其情绪内容的因素驱动的。
