Frequent or recurring nightmares, if left unchecked, can not only negatively impact sleep but also individuals’ daily lives. The method researchers used could boost the effectiveness of an already-existing therapeutic treatment for sufferers of chronic nightmares, who often have comorbidities such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland have adapted targeted memory reactivation (TMR), which has the potential to influence the course of memory formation through the application of cues during sleep, to help people manage their debilitating nightmares, according to a recently peer-reviewed study.

The study builds off of image rehearsal therapy (IRT), a cognitive behavioral technique often employed in the service of reducing the number and intensity of nightmares that weakens nightmares by giving them context through conversation.

Patients are asked to think back on their nightmares and edit them to imagine positive endings to them. The idea behind the practice is to let the mental exercises, which can rewrite dream narratives, bleed into the patients’ dream worlds – resulting in higher-quality sleep unfettered by the stress that normally accompanies nightmares.

However, much of the research suggests that as little as 30% of people who try IRT respond positively to it, and researchers learned that the odds of therapeutic success were increased when IRT was paired with TMR.
“There is a relationship between the types of emotions experienced in dreams and our emotional well-being,” says senior author Lampros Perogamvros, a psychiatrist at the Sleep Laboratory of the Geneva University Hospitals.

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