Nightmares are a core feature of posttraumatic stress disorder, are poorly understood, and are associated with serious negative outcomes. Their biology has been difficult to study, and the feasibility of capturing them in the naturalistic home environment has been poor. This said, the published research and dominant scientific model has focused on nightmares as a manifestation of noradrenergic hyperarousal during rapid eye movement sleep. The current study used at-home, participant-applied devices to measure nightmare physiology in posttraumatic stress disorder treatment-seeking veterans, by examining heartrate measures as indicators of noradrenergic tone, and sleep-stage characteristics and stability in the sleep preceding time-stamped nightmare awakenings. Our data indicate the high feasibility of participant-administered, at-home measurement, and showed an unexpected stability of -rapid eye movement sleep along with no evidence of heartrate elevations in sleep preceding nightmare awakenings. Altogether, these data highlight new opportunities for the study of nightmares while questioning the sufficiency of dominant models, which to date are largely theoretically based.
Keywords: electroencephalography; heartrate; nightmares; posttraumatic stress disorder; rapid eye movement sleep; veterans.
© 2022 European Sleep Research Society.