Dreaming Is a Sleep Related Cognitive Activ- Ity Characterized by Multisensory Imagery, Emotional Arousal and Apparent

1629 DREAMING IS A SLEEP RELATED COGNITIVE ACTIVITY CHARACTERIZED BY MULTISENSORY IMAGERY, EMOTIONAL AROUSAL AND APPARENT SPEECH AND motor activity. For some REM sleep parasomnias, most notably REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD),1–3 the emotional, verbal, or motor components of dreaming may be enacted behaviorally and form part of the disorder’s clinical symptomatology. These behaviors are distinct from other behaviors observable during REM sleep that are not clearly linked with dream content, such as phasic muscle twitches, and from somnambulistic behaviors observable during NREM sleep that are not typically associated with vivid dreaming. Dream-enacting behaviors have also been reported for healthy individuals in autobiographical accounts4 and by parents evaluating their children’s sleep.5 We recently demonstrated6 that in the first 12 postpartum weeks, 63% of new mothers report some form of dream enactment, whether it be body or limb movement, emotional expression (e.g., weeping during a sad dream), or verbalization of dreamed speech; behaviors were also prevalent for pregnant women (56%) and nulligravid controls (40%). Such behaviors are most often reported for transitions from dreaming to wakefulness because the individual is able to recall enactment of the imagery immediately after it takes place. To illustrate, in a dream report of being pursued by a leopard and confronted by a looming masked figure, a dreamer describes his emotional reactions during the dream and in the transition to awakening: