Two new studies suggest that COVID-19 may be influencing your dreams and even affecting your memory.
COVID-19 dreams
During and after COVID-19 lockdown, people tend to dream more about their loved ones, being in crowded places and eating. This was one of the key findings of a new study that evaluated sleeping and dreaming patterns among 89 participants of the study.
The study, led by Prof Luigi De Gennaro and PhD student Serena Scarpelli, University of Rome, in Italy, followed 90 participants over a period of two weeks. The study period included one week of full lockdown restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the following week, when restrictions were lifted.
During the study period, participants used a sleep-dream diary each morning, recording their sleep quality and the content of their dreams. Nearly all participants recorded the data requested (89 out of 90 participants), which provided some insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our sleep.
“Statistical comparisons showed that participants had higher numbers of awakenings, lower ease of falling asleep, higher dream recall and lucid dream frequency during lockdown than post-lockdown,” the authors reported.
Among the participants, about 46% reported having low sleep quality during lockdown, and nearly 63% reported having post-traumatic stress disorder related symptoms during sleep. “Further, 71.91% of the sample reported a significant level of state-like anxiety, and 69.66% had a clinically relevant level of trait-like anxiety symptoms,” the authors reported.
Regarding dreams, the 10 most common dreams reported by participants included topics on the COVID-19 pandemic, pets, being chased, social media, travelling, the workplace, school, food, crowded places and about loved ones. “Loved ones, crowded places and eating were the most frequent dream contents in both weeks. Statistical comparisons showed that subjects had more dreams, including “being in crowded places”, during post-lockdown than lockdown,” the authors wrote.” A comparable pattern was detected for dreams about “travelling”, being more common after rather than during lockdown.
However, sleep and dreams are not the only ways COVID-19 is messing with your head. Another study found that people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus experience memory issues.
Memory problems with COVID-19
People experiencing a mild presentation of COVID-19 seem to experience memory problems more often than people not exposed to the virus. This was the key finding of a new study that followed a group of 13,301 adults in Norway, between February 1 and April 15, 2020.
Among the participants who tested positive for COVID-19, 11% reported having memory problems. “In contrast, 254 of 5712 participants (4%) in the SARS-CoV-2–negative group or 80 of 3342 participants (2%) in the untested randomly selected reported memory problems,” the authors wrote.
Their statistical model further showed that having the COVID-19 virus was strongly associated with a four-fold higher chance of reporting memory problems over a period of eight months, compared to a control group. Most of the participants who tested positive for the virus also reported other health issues.
“Our findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may negatively impact memory even 8 months after having a mild case of the disease, and this can be associated with a worsening of health and post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC),” the authors report.
“The findings are a strong impetus to reconsider the notion that COVID-19 can be a mild disease. It also questions whether the current home-treatment strategies are optimal for the long-term outcome,” the authors wrote.