Pandemic causes bad dreams

Sci­en­tists from the Neu­ro­math­e­mat­ics Research, Inno­va­tion and Dis­sem­i­na­tion Cen­ter (Neu­ro­Mat) have found that the pan­dem­ic affects the behav­ior of peo­ple not only in their wak­ing state. It also leads to fright­en­ing and dis­turb­ing dreams.

Dur­ing the study, sci­en­tists ana­lyzed 239 dream records of 67 peo­ple made in March and April 2020. Peo­ple’s dreams dur­ing a pan­dem­ic reflect the bur­den of men­tal anguish, fear of infec­tion, stress asso­ci­at­ed with the need to main­tain social dis­tance and lack of phys­i­cal con­tact with oth­er peo­ple.

Dream reports abound in terms that can be attrib­uted to anger and sad­ness, as well as feel­ings of clean­li­ness and pol­lu­tion. Accord­ing to the researchers, the asso­ci­a­tions of dreams with clean­li­ness indi­cate new social strate­gies — the use of masks, social dis­tance, the use of san­i­tiz­ers, etc.

The results of the obser­va­tions are con­sis­tent with the hypoth­e­sis that dreams reflect prob­lems expe­ri­enced dur­ing wake­ful­ness. And the pre­dom­i­nance of neg­a­tive emo­tions, such as sad­ness, anger, indi­cates an increased emo­tion­al load that peo­ple do not have time to process.