Dream Recall Frequency Is Associated With Medial Prefrontal Cortex White-Matter Density

• Main Authors: Raphael Vallat, Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub, Alain Nicolas, Perrine Ruby
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: dreaming; dream recall; voxel-based morphometry; sleep; MRI; hippocampus
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01856/full

Recent findings indicate that dream recall frequency (DRF) is associated with neurophysiological traits, and notably the regional cerebral blood flow at rest within the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). To test whether, such physiological traits are rooted in anatomical specificities, we used voxel-based morphometry to compare the white matter and gray matter density in regions related to dream recall (either at the experimental or theoretical level, MPFC, TPJ, hippocampus and amygdala) between 46 high dream recallers (HR, DRF = 5.98 ± 1.25 days per week with a dream report) and 46 low dream recallers (LR, DRF = 0.34 ± 0.29). We found an increased medial prefrontal cortex white-matter density in HR compared to LR but no other significant difference between the two groups. These results are consistent with previous studies showing that lesions within the white matter of medial prefrontal cortex are associated with a partial or total cessation of dream reporting and suggest an implication of this region in dream recall or, more likely, in dream production.