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RBD: A Window into the Dreaming Process

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Rapid-Eye-Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder

Abstract

Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is often defined as dream-enacting behaviors. However, the dreaming features in RBD are less studied than its motor aspects or than RBD as prodromal neurodegeneration. Dream content during RBD is often (40–59%), but not always, recalled afterward. The question whether RBD is not only a motor disorder (loss of muscle atonia) but also a dreaming disorder remains open. On the one hand, RBD-associated dreams differ from “normal” dreaming (in idiopathic RBD as well as in Parkinson’s disease-associated RBD) by a more active/violent content. On the other hand, spontaneous RBD reports may be biased toward remembering scenarios that awakened or injured the sleeping couple. Plus, quiet, ordinary dreaming can also be observed with RBD. When dream content is systematically collected after provoked awakenings in a sleep lab during RBD movements and during quiet REM sleep in RBD patients, its content is not different from that of controls without RBD. RBD behaviors are quite concordant with dream recall, as reported in numerous case reports by history and by direct observation in the sleep laboratory. This concordance has been tested in a single controlled study and debated in the context of the analysis of REM sleep-associated twitches in developing rats. Eventually, RBD can be viewed (via the observation of movements, speech and facial expressions, and their isomorphism with the dream recall) as a (small) window to overtly approach the physiology of dreaming and cognitive processes during REM sleep. It includes how RBD can be used to demonstrate if non-dreamers do actually dream and if eye movements are tightly coordinated with dream images during REM sleep, to test the replay hypothesis for sleep-related verbal and motor memory consolidation and to study the phonetics and semantics of language during sleep.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sorbonne University, Paris, France

    Isabelle Arnulf

  2. Sleep Disorder Unit, Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, Paris, France

    Isabelle Arnulf

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  1. Isabelle Arnulf
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Correspondence to Isabelle Arnulf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center, Departments of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School and Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Carlos H. Schenck

  2. Department of Neurology, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Birgit Högl

  3. Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Aleksandar Videnovic

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Arnulf, I. (2019). RBD: A Window into the Dreaming Process. In: Schenck, C., Högl, B., Videnovic, A. (eds) Rapid-Eye-Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90152-7_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90152-7_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90152-7

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