Image: © iStockphoto/PinkBadger
Night owls might think staying up late is a real hoot, but a new study hints that delayed sleep might have a sinister side. People who hit the sack late might have a greater risk of experiencing nightmares, according to scientists, although they add that follow-up research is needed to confirm the link.
"It's a very interesting preliminary study, and we desperately need more research in this area," says Jessica Payne, director of the Sleep, Stress and Memory Lab at the University of Notre Dame, commenting on the new findings.
Previous reports have estimated 80 percent of adults experience at least one nightmare a year, with 5 percent suffering from disturbing dreams more than once a month. The new paper, from a group of scientists writing in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms, surveyed 264 university students about their sleep habits and frequency of nightmares, defined as "dysphoric dreams associated with feelings of threat, anxiety, fear or terror."
The scientists, led by Yavuz Selvi at the Yuzuncu Yil University in Van, Turkey, used a measure known as the Van Dream Anxiety Scale to assess the rate of bad dreams. Specifically, study participants were asked to rate their frequency of experiencing nightmares on a scale from zero to 4, corresponding to never and always, respectively.
On average, individuals who described themselves as evening types had a score of 2.10, whereas their morning-type equivalents averaged 1.23 on the scale, a significant difference according to the authors of the study.
The Turkish study follows from a larger online survey of nearly 4,000 people that found hints of an association between being a night owl and nightmares among women beginning in their 20s. Those results from Tore Nielsen, director of the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory at the Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, were published in 2010 in the Journal of Biological Rhythms. "I was pleased to see that they replicated the association between being an evening person and having nightmares," Nielsen says. But he adds that more research is needed into how this might play out according to a person's sex: "Men and women have very different emotional systems, and I think we're seeing a different expression of that difference in nightmares."
Experts are intrigued by the idea that a person's daily body cycle, known as the circadian rhythm, might be linked to nightmares. "I think it's certainly of interest," says Russell Rosenberg, director of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine & Technology and chairman of the National Sleep Foundation. "There's certainly not a lot of research in this area."
Mood matters
Exactly why evening types might report more nightmares is a mystery. The authors of the new study point to previous work that found these individuals might be more likely to have mood disorders and stressful lifestyles. Other scientists have found an association between mood disorders, such as depression, and sleep problems.
Mark Blagrove, director of the Sleep Lab at Swansea University, notes that the survey by Selvi et al. found that evening types were slightly more likely to recall their dreams overall, so this could in part explain the findings.
However, Blagrove adds that night owls who go to bed late during the week and have to wake up for work at the same time as early birds are more likely to experience sleep deficit—and to make up for it on the weekends by sleeping in. It's during this extended weekend sleep that they might experience more REM sleep, a sleep phase that is characterized by rapid eye movement, increased brain activity and vivid dreaming. "They might have a whole lot of recovery sleep on the weekend that explains why this is happening," Blagrove says.
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
8 Comments
Add CommentNightmares happen to some people, nothing to do with staying up late. I know three people who have nightmares and they are NOT night owls. My doctor has said, that through out history, some people have to stay up at night to protect everyone else. Makes sense to me. Nightmares are from some other type of problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are two issues here in danger of being confused. I stay up late quite often and almost always get plenty of sleep. Many people stay up late and don't get enough sleep. I never get nightmares, except when I was a little kid and not a night owl. Sleep is important, but I doubt that people who stay awake late on one part of the earth are more at risk than people who keep the same hours on a part of the earth where those hours are normal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLa préface de mon coeur.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComme une
mélodie, comme
le son qui
revient dans
le lieu naturel
qui rappelle
la jeunesse.
Francesco Sinibaldi
The title of your article, "Night Owls More Likely to Suffer from Nightmares,Survey Suggests" actually belies the info in the article. The first paragraph reveals that folks who retire late MIGHT have a greater risk of nightmares, but more research is required. And, you quote someone from the Nat'l Sleep Foundation as saying that there "isn't a lot of research in this area." Until you can produce unarguable data, why do you even print an article such as this? This is the second article in Scientific American of late that is clearly not up to your usual standards - what is happening to you guys? Again, this article is poorly written and lacks supportive data for what the title claims. And, no mention was made about the research that was done years ago that revealed that there are, indeed, "day" and "night" people - night people don't stay up late because they think it's a "hoot" - it's when they function better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you changed ownership, or just experiencing a bad run of journalists? I'm here to tell you if I read one more article that is not up to your former standards, it will give rise to me cancelling my subscription. Pull it together - we intellectuals need the Scientific American you used to be; because if you don't come back, you really need to consider removing the word "Scientific" from the name of your publication.
Beautiful poem
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that Scientific American is a valued journal that should publish with impeccable selection criteria, but I want to point out that running that sort of magazine is tremendously difficult today. Scientific American used to be a moderately expensive magazine supplying vital information to a certain well-educated clientele. To all indications, it was a stable business. But all that took place in an era which, while recent in historic terms, bears little resemblance to our own. The varieties of electronic communication available, as well as today's demography and economics of education, make the old Scientific American (which I dearly loved) a relic of the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect the current editors and business managers are doing their best to maintain the tradition of excellence that comes with the name of the publication. But I don't envy them their incredibly hard assignment. My own life history reminds me that while difficult challenges can have great personal rewards, impossible ones are disheartening. If one is trying to flow against the stream of social and economic evolution, one's chances of success are poor.
More study is certainly required. I'm a "night owl" as well as chronically short of sleep. I do not have much in the way of disturbing dreams though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I do find disturbing is the way some commenters fail to interpret the title of the article. A survey is hardly bullet proof evidence of anything and a reasonable person understands that. The title clearly states that a survey suggests something. The article backs this up by identifying patterns in the survey results and saying more study is needed. This is valid science. Perhaps if SciAm was named "Totally Proven Science that is no Longer Being Studied Because it is Accepted by Everyone" then the complaints would be valid.
Or perhaps if this comments section were named, "Completely Thought-Out and Researched Discussions With Very Serious Implications," we kibitzers would stop shooting our mouths off entirely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this