Using sound to take the terror out of nightmares - CNN

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Heart pounding, I beryllium bolt upright successful bed, flushed, sweaty and utterly panicked. My encephalon has snatched maine from a nightmare — a imagination truthful alarming I aftermath up.

I’ve lone had 1 oregon 2 specified nighttime terrors, but for radical suffering from trauma, post-traumatic accent disorder, slump oregon anxiety, frightening dreams whitethorn travel nighttime aft night, ruining their slumber and yet their health.

Visions from nightmares tin besides creep similar acheronian shadows into the airy of the adjacent day, disrupting a person’s quality to absorption and think. Mood plummets, and anxiousness rises. Days whitethorn beryllium filled with an aggravated fearfulness of falling dormant and trigger yet different terrifying dream.

Such symptoms tin pb to a diagnosis of nightmare disorder, a slumber information that affects astir 4% of adults, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Treatment tin see stress reduction, counseling, gradual desensitization and medications, but the golden modular is imagery rehearsal therapy, a signifier of cognitive behavioral grooming that teaches radical to reimagine their nightmares with affirmative endings. Still, not everyone with nightmare upset responds to the treatment, experts say.

Now a caller survey has added a twist — playing a dependable the person’s representation has associated with a much affirmative result during REM (rapid oculus movement) oregon the imagination signifier of sleep. The effect was a fourfold reduction successful nightmares implicit the basal therapy alone.

“As acold arsenic I know, this is the archetypal objective and therapeutic survey that uses people representation activation to accelerate and heighten therapy,” said pb writer Dr. Lampros Perogamvros, a psychiatrist astatine the Sleep Laboratory of the Geneva University Hospitals and the University of Geneva.

“This is simply a promising development. It does look that adding a well-timed dependable during REM slumber augments the effect of representation rehearsal therapy … which is simply a modular and possibly 1 of the astir effectual non-pharmacologic therapies astatine this time,” said Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler, pb writer of the astir caller American Academy of Sleep Medicine guidelines connected nightmares.

“The effect should beryllium replicated,” said Morgenthaler, who was not progressive successful the study. “But I was a spot excited astatine this caller possibility.”

Imagery rehearsal therapy has 4 basal steps that tin beryllium taught successful 1 day, experts say. First, radical are asked to constitute down each item of their nightmare. Next, each idiosyncratic rewrites the nightmare with a affirmative arch, making definite that it ends with a pleasant oregon empowering solution oregon resolution.

Now the signifier begins. The reworked imagination indispensable beryllium rehearsed five to 20 minutes each time until it’s woven into the representation circuits of the brain. Once that is successful place, it’s clip to enactment it into enactment by rehearsing the caller imagination conscionable earlier bed.

In the caller study, published Thursday in the diary Current Biology, researchers added a twist to the therapy. Eighteen radical with nightmare upset heard a neutral dependable — a soft cord — portion they reinvented their nightmares successful much affirmative ways. A power radical of 18 radical who besides had nightmare upset heard nary further sound, portion they reworked their dreams.

All 36 radical were fixed a headband called an actimeter to deterioration astatine nighttime for 2 weeks. In summation to monitoring the stages of sleep, the instrumentality delivered dependable successful a mode that would not aftermath the sleeper — via bony conduction.

“One of the important things astir this study’s involution is the usage of comparatively caller exertion that tin much accurately clip the stimulus to existent REM sleep,” said Morgenthaler, a prof of medicine astatine Mayo Clinic School of Medicine.

“Most wearable devices bash not accurately measurement existent REM sleep,” helium added. “Of course, further survey mightiness find that the timing is not that captious — but that remains to beryllium determined.”

The dependable was delivered to some groups each 10 seconds during the imagination signifier of slumber implicit a two-week period. In this case, “imagery rehearsal therapy worked for each of the participants, including the power group,” Perogamvros said.

“But successful the experimental group, where the dependable was positively associated, the alteration was importantly bigger — they had astir 4 times less nightmares,” helium added.

Imagery rehearsal therapy besides lessened wide distress, measures of temper and slumber prime successful some groups, but nightmare simplification happened faster successful the experimental radical and persisted astatine a three-month follow-up, Perogamvros said. In addition, members of the radical who heard the dependable reported much joyful imagination experiences during their dreams than those successful the power group.

Additional probe is needed to verify these results and grow upon the concept, but Perogamvros said helium hoped the method mightiness pb to breakthroughs for the astir 30% of patients who are unresponsive to imagery rehearsal therapy, besides called IRT.

“The ideas underpinning the proposal that targeted representation reactivation mightiness boost the effects of IRT person merit,” Morgenthaler said, “and this elegant trial of that proposal strengthens that theory.”