Dreamless Sleep May Result From a Stroke
Rare complication appears to be more than loss of recall
 (HealthDay News) -- Strokes can cause devastating consequences, including paralysis and loss of speech, but a little known and rare complication may be the loss of the ability to dream.
That's what happened to one elderly Swiss woman several days after she had a stroke. Her doctors reported their findings in the Annals of Neurology.
"This suggests that the area that was damaged [during the stroke] probably has some important role to play in the complex process that gives rise to dreaming," study author Dr. Claudio Bassetti, from the department of neurology at University Hospital in Zurich, told HealthDay.
Stroke, or brain attack as it's sometimes called, occurs when blood doesn't circulate properly in the brain, thereby damaging brain tissue by depriving parts of the brain of oxygen. Strokes can be caused by a blood clot that blocks a blood vessel in the brain or by bleeding in the brain.
Stroke is the most common cause of adult disability, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. More than 700,000 Americans have a stroke each year, and 160,000 die from the brain attacks annually, according to the institute.
Loss of dreaming is not a common consequence of stroke, but it does have a name -- Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome. The side effect was first noticed in the 1880s and was named after the doctors who first detected it.
The latest report details the case of a 73-year-old woman who had a stroke that included vision loss and weakness on the left side of her body. Her vision improved after about two days, but her left side remained weak throughout her entire four-week hospital stay.
On the third night after having the stroke, the woman said she had a short, vivid dream. Then she stopped dreaming altogether. Before she had the stroke, she said that she could remember her dreams at least three or four times a week.
It's possible that the woman lost the ability to recall her dreams, but it's more likely that she lost the ability to dream, according to Bassetti. "My educated guess is to say she's not dreaming," he said.
The doctors performed sleep studies to try to determine whether she was not dreaming or simply forgot her dreams.
She had normal brain wave patterns during sleep and did enter rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. It's believed that dreaming occurs during REM sleep. They even tried waking the woman during REM sleep because people often vividly recall their dreams when awakened from this stage of sleep. However, she remembered nothing.
That suggests that the woman was not dreaming, rather than that she was forgetting her dreams, Bassetti said.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist from New York University Medical Center, told HealthDay that "since even in REM she did not recall her dreams, it does suggest that those areas damaged were critical for either generating dreams or recalling dreams."
After about a year, the woman started dreaming again. She said the dreams were less vivid than they had been in the past.
On the Web
To learn more about controlling risk factors for stroke, visit the American Stroke Association online.
Author: Serena Gordon
SOURCES: HealthDay News; Claudio Bassetti, M.D., department of neurology, University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland; Orrin Devinsky, M.D., neurologist, New York University Medical Center, and professor of neurology, New York University School of Medicine, New York City; September 2004, Annals of Neurology; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (www.ninds.nih.gov)
Publication Date: Sept. 30, 2005
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