Nightmare researchers meet online next week

Next week, people who study nightmares will meet online for two afternoons. Here is what is on the agenda, and some of the recent research behind it.

The event

Nightmare Symposium 3.0 is the third edition of a digital meeting hosted by SRH University’s School of Psychology. It runs on Zoom on Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 September 2026, from 3 to 6 p.m. on both days, in English. It is open to professionals and to anyone interested in the scientific study of dreams and nightmares, and each talk is followed by a discussion with the audience. Registration is by email to Dr Jonas Mathes of the School of Psychology; the event page has the details. It does not state a time zone, so check before you join.^[1]

What is on the agenda

The page lists the talks by title, without speakers. They fall roughly into two groups.

• Who has nightmares, and why. Nightmares across cultures; how to classify nightmares in young people seeking treatment; sleep loss and combat stress; nightmares in persistent pain, described in one title as “a red flag for clinicians”; negative memory activation beyond neuroticism and trauma; nightmares in mood disorders, from suicide risk to treatment; what nightmares look like on EEG; and coping strategies and personality.
• How to treat them. Chronic nightmares and cognitive behavioural therapy; bringing the treatment of traumatic nightmares into PTSD guidelines; rescripting disturbing dreams in multi-sensory virtual reality; a randomised trial of a self-help web application; “nightmare engineering”; lucid dream control; and a case report of lucid dreaming treatment for a schoolchild.

Where the field is in 2026

Nightmares and sleep are closely tied. In an online survey of 439 adults, published this year in the International Journal of Dream Research, 22% screened positive for a possible nightmare disorder, and disturbing dreams predicted poorer sleep quality even after psychological distress was taken into account.^[2] In a study of 654 adults with mild to moderate sleep problems, nightmares were more frequent than in a representative sample, and waking-life stress partly shaped the link between poor sleep and nightmares; the author suggests offering nightmare treatment to people with insomnia who are distressed by nightmares, and insomnia treatment to people with nightmares.^[3] A third study, in Dreaming, asked people directly how much they think their nightmares delay falling asleep and spoil their sleep.^[4]

All three are cross-sectional, so they show links at one point in time rather than cause and effect, and a screening questionnaire is not a diagnosis. Together, though, they make a simple case: when someone says they sleep badly, it is worth asking about their dreams.

Treatment is being refined, not reinvented. Imagery rehearsal remains the treatment the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for nightmare disorder, and in 2025 the World Sleep Society endorsed that position.^{[5, 6]} Much current work tries to make it stronger or easier to reach. In one small study of 36 people, playing a sound during REM sleep that had been paired with the new ending led to fewer nightmares after two weeks than in a group that heard the same sound without the pairing.^[7] Lucid dreaming therapy is listed among the treatments that “may be used”, a weaker level of evidence.^[5] Virtual reality and web-based self-help, both on next week’s agenda, are earlier still.

What this means for you

If nightmares are spoiling your sleep, they are worth mentioning to your doctor; research increasingly treats them as part of sleep health rather than a curiosity. To learn more, read when bad dreams become a condition and how imagery rehearsal works. If nightmares ever come with thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out to a crisis line or your local emergency number today; help works, and it is there.