Dream content as a measure of memory consolidation across multiple periods of sleep

Lead Research Organisation: Swansea University
Department Name: School of Human Sciences

Abstract

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Description The 'dream-lag' refers to the delayed incorporation of events or memories from waking life into dreams that occur 5-7 days after the events. Although there is widespread acceptance of the day-residue effect, where events or memories from waking life are incorporated into dreams of the next night, the dream-lag effect is less widely accepted, despite recent paper supporting it (Blagrove et al, 2011: Consciousness and Cognition, and PLoS ONE). This research grant funded 4 attempted replications of the dream-lag, one a naturalistic study of daily life and home dreams, one a study of the dream-lag for specifically Rapid Eye Movement Sleep dreams, and 2 studies in which the incorporation of a controlled experience during waking life into the dreams of the next 10 days was assessed. All 4 experiments succeeded in showing a significant dream-lag effect.
Exploitation Route Education: Consistent high quality sleep is needed for learners.

Psychotherapy: Implications for the way, and timescale, that new experiences, including traumatic experiences, are integrated, or fail to be integrated, into the wider memory, and the role of sleep in these processes. These 4 successful experiments are evidence that there is a 7 day period during which memories from waking life are consolidated, that is, made permanent and also integrated into existing long-term memory. This indicates that consistent high quality sleep across the week is needed for effective learning, relating to new knowledge or autobiographical memory.
Sectors Education,Healthcare
URL http://www.swansea.ac.uk/sleeplab
 
Description The implications of a 5-7 day period of emotional memory consolidation during sleep, and in particular Rapid Eye Movement sleep, are that consistently good sleep is needed for the proper integration of new experiences with older memories. Poor sleep might thus result in a failure to respond adaptively to, and learn from, new emotional occurrences. In publications read by individuals involved in researching the processes of emotional adaptation and also learning we are making clear the impact of our work for optimal learning, which would include education, and adaptive responding to new life circumstances.
First Year Of Impact 2014
Sector Education,Healthcare
Impact Types Economic
 
Description Research Bursary
Amount £28,000 (GBP)
Funding ID 2014/83 
Organisation BIAL Foundation 
Sector Public
Country Portugal
Start 01/2015 
End 09/2016
 
Description Dream content as a measure of memory consolidation across multiple periods of sleep: First results of ESRC award to M.Blagrove, M.Walker, P.Lewis & G.Gaskell. RO J-B Eichenlaub 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Primary Audience
Results and Impact Seminar presentation to staff, students and visitors on May 1st 2013 at the Department of Psychology, Swansea University. Results from 4 successful replications and extensions of the dream-lag effect were described. The dream-lag effect refers to the incorporation into dreams of events and memories from 5-7 days before the dream. The effect has been interpreted as evidence for memory consolidation processes occurring during sleep, and occurring over a 7 day period. At the seminar several novel characteristics of the dream-lag were described, a successful extension to a word learning task was reported, and several alternative theoretical accounts of why the effect happens were explored. Possibly as important as these results is also the finding that an EEG power variable (that is, the strength of certain brain waves occurring during sleep) was significantly related to the number of incorporations of recent events into dreams.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity