Why do you scream in a dream

Dreaming is a normal physiological reaction of the cerebral cortex after the human body enters deep sleep. Especially after being too tired during the day, there is a greater chance of dreaming at night. Psychology believes that the content of dreams is often related to real life and is a microcosm of reality. Many people have experienced shouting in their dreams. What is going on? When this phenomenon occurs, you must not take it lightly and be alert to the possibility of Parkinson's disease.

Dreaming occurs during REM sleep, a stage in which our bodies are paralyzed and our muscles are relaxed. When we move in our dreams, our legs and feet do not move with us. However, for people with this sleep behavior disorder, the vivid and frightening images in their dreams will cause them to actually move, experience violent movements of their hands and feet, and some people will even scream. This behavior may occur once in a while or multiple times a night. The condition usually strikes middle-aged and older people and tends to get worse over time, taking a toll on the sufferer and their partner.

As early as half a century ago, it was discovered that rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder precedes the onset of Parkinson's disease and dementia symptoms. Most patients will develop Parkinson's disease, Lewy body dementia, multiple system atrophy, etc., but the mechanism behind this is still unclear.

1. A PhD from Aarhus University in Denmark explored this interaction in more depth from the perspective of neuroinflammation. Parkinson's disease is caused by the death of dopamine neurons produced in the substantia nigra of the striatum. As dopamine levels slowly decrease, various motor symptoms characteristic of the disease appear, such as muscle rigidity, tremor, bradykinesia, and language changes. Inflammation symptoms can be seen in the brains of Parkinson's patients, especially the activation of microglia, a type of macrophage that is closely related to the immune response of the central nervous system. Therefore, this inflammation is also an important research avenue for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Second, the researchers also saw this inflammatory phenomenon in patients with REM sleep behavior disorder. They performed PET scans on 20 patients and compared them with 19 healthy people, including the activation of microglia in different areas of the striatum (substantia nigra, caudate, putamen), and also evaluated dopamine neuron function. As expected, patients had increased microglial activation in the substantia nigra and decreased presynaptic nigrostriatal dopaminergic function, indicating the presence of neuroinflammation and dopaminergic deficits in their brains.

3. The results of this study prove that neuroinflammation is a factor in Parkinson's disease and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder. The researchers will continue to follow the study subjects to observe whether Parkinson's disease will be diagnosed. The current study only involves a small number of subjects, and the number of studies needs to be further expanded. If the results can be replicated, it could provide a new potential treatment for this sleep behavior, and also have the effect of delaying the onset of Parkinson's disease, providing a new approach for early diagnosis and early treatment.

4. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disease that causes movement symptoms such as slow movement and tremor paralysis, which means that the disease has reached a relatively serious level. Parkinson's disease develops gradually. By the time patients become aware of the disease and seek medical treatment, it is often the tenth year since the onset of intrinsic changes in Parkinson's disease. This period is called the prodromal period. In the prodromal stage, Parkinson's disease often shows many signs. Screaming while dreaming at night is an important feature. In addition, loss of smell, constipation, orthostatic hypotension, depression, etc. are also early manifestations of the disease. Therefore, if middle-aged and elderly people experience these physical discomforts, they should go to the hospital's neurology department for a systematic examination in order to detect Parkinson's disease as early as possible, and to diagnose and control it early.