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Post-traumatic nightmares as a dysfunctional state

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2001

Tore A. Nielsen  and
Anne Germain
Tore A. Nielsen
Affiliation:
Sleep Research Center, Hôpital de Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada H4J 1C5; Psychiatry Department, Université de Montréal, Québec, [email protected]
Anne Germain
Affiliation:
Sleep Research Center, Hôpital de Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada H4J 1C5; Psychiatry Department, Université de Montréal, Québec, [email protected]
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Abstract

That PTSD nightmares are highly realistic threat simulations triggered by trauma is difficult to reconcile with the disturbed, sometimes debilitating sleep and waking functioning of PTSD sufferers. A theory that accounts for fundamental forms of imagery other than threat scenarios could explain the selection of many more adaptive human functions – some still pertinent to survival today. For example, interactive characters, a virtually ubiquitous form of dream imagery, could be simulations of attachment relationships that aid species survival in many different ways.

[Revonsuo]

Type
Brief Report
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 23 , Issue 6 , December 2000 , pp. 978 - 979
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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