Dreams in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: A study on the effects of amygdala activation on emotion in dreaming

Dreaming has been said to arise from the temporal lobe, with emotions directing the plot of dreams. The amygdala is highly active during dreaming sleep and is therefore implicated in dreaming. The amgydala is implicated in FEAR and ANGER in waking life, so it is inferred that it is responsible for the production of these experiences in dreaming. Individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) experience epileptiform activity in the temporal that probably increased activation of the amygdala. Previous studies found TLE was associated with increased rates of dysphoric dreaming in TLE when investigating recurrent dreams. Those studies focused on recurrent dreams, while the current study focused on non-recurrent dreams. The study aimed to establish if dreams from individuals with TLE contained higher rates of FEAR and ANGER compared to other emotions in these dreams. This study also aimed to establish if dreams from individuals with TLE differed from those without TLE in rates of FEAR and ANGER. Most recent dream reports were collected from eight participants with TLE and from eight participants without TLE. The Affective Neuroscience Dream Scale (ANDS) was developed for this study to categorise emotions according to underlying neurobiology. The reliability and validity of this scale was assessed. The ANDS was used to code the emotions in these dream reports. Within group analyses showed that FEAR and ANGER were not consistently higher than other basic emotion for the TLE group. Between group analyses found no differences in any of the eight basic emotions, in amygdala-related emotions, in non-amygdala-related emotions, or in emotions when divided according to valence. TLE was well-regulated in participants, so these results indicate a normal dreaming pattern is experienced by individuals whose TLE is well-regulated. This indicates that once the disruption to the amgydala is controlled, dysphoric dreaming is reduced.