Parasomnia Dreaming: Exploring Other Forms of Sleep Consciousness

Dreams are reported from all of stages of sleep. Yet almost all research and literature has focused on REM sleep. Much of what we know of dreaming outside REM sleep comes from the study of parasomnias, extreme events including strange and unusual behaviors, often inducing awakenings from sleep. These are not the normal dreams of REM sleep. These are the other dreams, parasomnia dreams, and they are quite special. This book brings together leading dream scientists from throughout the world to address these dreams. It is among the first to focus on sleep mentation in the large portion of sleep that is not REM sleep. Many parasomnias are commonly experienced, and even when causing frequent disruption of sleep, they are only rarely reflective of underlying medical or psychiatric disease. The non-REM parasomnias include hypnogognic hallucinations, panic attacks, night terrors and dreaming associated with sleep walking and confusional arousals. The parasomnias of REM sleep include nightmares, sleep paralysis and the acting out of dreams in REM behavior disorder. Parasomnia dreams describe the phenomenological extremes of dream experience such as strange behaviors, thinking and thought very different from wake state, intense visual hallucinations, extreme emotions, a vivid and apparently real dream world, as well as confusion, autonomic discharge and strange automatic behaviors on awakening. These forms of consciousness are both phenomenologically and neurophysiologically very different from the waking consciousness.