The COVID-19 pandemic has changed nearly every aspect of our lives. Our dreams are no different. Soon after the first lockdowns started, people reported having more dreams than before, with different content. This was explained by the fact that many people were sleeping for longer, and waking without alarm clocks or an immediate schedule.
Other people were experiencing more stress, which can also alter dreaming. Now a new study, published in PLOS, has analysed hundreds of dream reports before and during lockdown to give detailed results of the pandemic’s impact on dreaming.
It has proven difficult to study dreams during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because it was unexpected, it was a challenge to find baseline dream data with which to compare the pandemic data. A similar problem occurred when researchers aimed to study how dreams changed due to the events of 9/11, and after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake.
