0937 Development of the Affective Neuroscience Dream Rating Scale

Abstract Introduction Methods for quantifying emotional dream content have been developed. These approaches have yielded significant insights into dream content, their relation to waking cognition, and mental health. The current dream rating scale was developed to improve upon previous approaches by conceptualizing the scale based on the known fundamental affective neuronal circuits within the brain. Methods Seventy-seven items were developed representing fundamental emotions (SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, GRIEF and PLAY). One-hundred dreams were randomly selected from a dream database (www.dream-bank.net). To determine interrater agreement, two raters scored all 77-items for each of the 100 dreams based on if the emotional content was present or not. Items with an interrater agreement (kappa) below .5 were excluded. Nightmares (i.e., extremely unpleasant or disturbing dreams) were independently identified by a sleep-trauma expert and compared to non-nightmares for the 7 scales. Results Thirty-three items (kappa 0.5; range .5-.82) were retained for the final scale. Of the items retained, 29 (85%) were endorsed in 10% or more of dreams. The most frequently identified items in the final scale were danger (44%) and fear (45%). Seven emotional dream scales were apriori identified with 3-9 items each being retained in the final scales. Scales were significantly correlated between raters (r = .54 to .88, p .001). Across the 100 dreams FEAR was the highest endorsed emotion scale while GRIEF was lowest. As expected, nightmares had significantly elevated scores compared to non-nightmares on the FEAR, RAGE, SEEKING and GRIEF scales (p .001) but not CARE, LUST, or PLAY. Conclusion This dream rating scale based on mammalian emotional circuits previously identified through affective neuroscience shows promise for quantifying and understanding the emotional content of dreams. Future studies will need to further validate this preliminary affective dream content scale using different populations including individuals exposed to trauma and those with mental health and sleep disorders to determine its clinical utility. Support (if any) N/A