Dream content in chronically-treated persons with schizophrenia

Oneiric activity in schizophrenia: Textual analysis of dream reports

“…All the previous studies that analyzed dreams' length in schizophrenic subjects, with the exception of Carrington (1972) and Lusignan et al (2009), that used to tape-record the reports and accurately transcript them, a method very close to ours, did not specify the way they were collected (Biddle, 1963;Cappon, 1959;Hall, 1966;Noble, 1951;Okuma, Sunami, Fukuma, Takeo, & Motoike, 1970;Richardson & Moore, 1963;Schnetzler & Charbonnel, 1976) or, if specified, the dreams were gathered from self transcriptions (Chang, 1964;Scarone et al, 2008;Stompe et al, 2003).…”

“…There is at last a controversial finding on dream bizarreness that has been consistently reported by some researchers (Cappon, 1959;Carrington, 1972;Richardson & Moore, 1963), but not confirmed by others (Hall, 1966;Lusignan et al, 2009;Scarone et al, 2008). A study carried out by D'Agostino, Limosani, Manzone, and shows that schizophrenic subjects show a degree of cognitive bizarreness in waking fantasies comparable to the one found in their dreams and in those of normal subjects.…”

Sleep, Nightmares and Schizophrenia

“…Findings have been inconsistent. Questionnaire results from the Lusignan, et al [47] study of REM dreams reveal that, when compared to controls, patients with schizophrenia report experiencing a greater number of nightmares. Their dream narratives are also shorter, but no other significant differences were found among the three groups studied.…”

“…Many attempts have been made to characterize dream content that is specific to schizophrenia and distinguishable from dream content in healthy adults or in other psychiatric conditions [47,48]. Findings have been inconsistent.…”

NonREM sleep mentation in chronically-treated persons with schizophrenia

“…We recently showed that, when compared to the laboratory-based REM sleep dream narratives of healthy individuals, the REM sleep dream narratives from chronically treated patients with schizophrenia are shorter, with quantitative differences on several content scales (e.g., fewer familiar characters, more strangers, fewer neutral emotions, a trend for fewer familiar settings) (Lusignan et al, 2009). We also found that patients with schizophrenia spontaneously rated their dream narratives as being less bizarre than did controls despite a similar density of bizarre elements as scored by external judges.…”