Dreaming during the Covid-19 pandemic: Computational assessment of dream reports reveals mental suffering related to fear of contagion

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242903
• Publication Date: 2020-11-30T13:28:00Z
• Authors: Natália Bezerra Mota; Janaina Weissheimer; Marina Ribeiro; Mizziara de Paiva; Juliana Avilla-Souza; Gabriela Simabucuru; Monica Frias Chaves; Lucas Cecchi; Jaime Cirne; Guillermo Cecchi; Cilene Rodrigues; Mauro Copelli; Sidarta Ribeiro
• Keywords: Pandemic; 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak; Coronavirus Infections

The current global threat brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to widespread social isolation, posing new challenges in dealing with metal suffering related distancing, and quickly learning habits intended prevent contagion. Neuroscience psychology agree that dreaming helps people cope negative emotions learn from experience, but can effectively reveal mental changes behavior? To address this question, we applied natural language processing tools study 239 dream reports 67 individuals, made either before outbreak or during months of March April, 2020, when lockdown was imposed Brazil following WHO’s declaration pandemic. Pandemic dreams showed a higher proportion anger sadness words, average semantic similarities terms “contamination” “cleanness”. These features seem be associated linked as they explained 40% variance PANSS subscale socialization (p = 0.0088). results corroborate hypothesis reflect suffering, fear contagion, important daily directly impact socialization.