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Traditionally, emotions in dreams have been assessed using subjective ratings by human raters (e.g., external raters or dreamers themselves). These methods have extensive support and utility in dream science, yet they have certain innate limitations due to the subjective nature of the rating methodologies. Attempting to circumvent several of these limitations, we aimed to develop a novel method for objectively classifying and quantifying sequential (word-for-word) emotion within a dream report. We investigated whether sentiment analysis, a branch of natural language processing, could be used to generate continuous positive and negative valence ratings across a dream. In this pilot, proof-of-concept study, we used 14 dream reports collected upon awakening following overnight polysomnography. We also collected pre- and post-sleep affective data and personality metrics. Our objectives included demonstrating that (1) valence ratings derived from sentiment analysis (Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning [VADER]) could be used to visualize (plot) positive and negative emotion fluctuations within a dream, (2) how the visual properties of emotion fluctuations within a dream (peaks and troughs, area under the curve) can be used to generate novel "emotion indicators" as proxies for emotion regulation throughout a dream, and (3) these emotion indicators correlate with sleep, affective, and personality variables known to be associated with dreaming and emotion regulation. We describe 6 novel, objective dream emotion indicators: Total number of Peaks, total number of Troughs, Positive, Negative, and Overall Emotion Intensity (composites from an "area under the curve" method using the trapezoid rule applied to the peaks and troughs), and the Emotion Gradient (a polynomial trendline fitted to the emotion fluctuations in the dream chart). The latter signifies the overall direction of sequential emotion changes within a dream. Results also showed that 5/6 emotion indicators correlated significantly with at least one existing sleep, affective, or personality variable known to be associated with dreaming and emotion regulation. We propose that the novel emotion indicators potentially serve as proxies for emotion regulation processes unfolding within a dream. These preliminary findings provide a methodological foundation for future studies to test and refine the method in larger and more diverse samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Patients view their negative emotions as troublesome and they expect psychiatrists to deal with them, often wanting them taken away. We present a neuropsychoanalytical understanding of the essential biological function of emotion and how it influences behaviour. Through a vignette, we demonstrate how this understanding can contribute to the psychiatrist's management of the clinical encounter, in particular regarding the patient's expectations about their emotions and the pressures placed on the clinician. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article is divided into two parts. The first part explains how the concept of ›surprise‹ is understood in theoretical neuroscience today. The second part shows how remarkably closely the modern neuroscientific conception of the brain maps onto Freud’s classical metapsychological model of the mind. It shows also how the modern concepts expand upon some of Freud’s original concepts. The essential mechanism of surprise is that it reduces confidence in an existing belief about the world, and that this brings the belief in question to consciousness. However, special considerations apply to repressed unconscious beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neuropsychological disorder of anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP) can offer unique insights into the neurocognitive processes of body consciousness and representation. Previous studies have found associations between selective social cognition deficits and anosognosia. In this study, we examined how such social cognition deficits may directly interact with representations of one's body as disabled in AHP. We used a modified set of previously validated Theory of Mind (ToM) stories to create disability-related content that was related to post-stroke paralysis and to investigate differences between right hemisphere damage patients with (n = 19) and without (n = 19) AHP. We expected AHP patients to perform worse than controls when trying to infer paralysis-related mental states in the paralysis-related ToM stories and explored whether such differences depended on the inference patients were asked to perform (e.g. self or other referent perspective-taking). Using an advanced structural neuroimaging technique, we expected selective social cognitive deficits to be associated with posterior parietal cortex lesions and deficits in self-referent perspective-taking in paralysis-related mentalising to be associated with frontoparietal disconnections. Group- and individual-level results revealed that AHP patients performed worse than HP controls when trying to infer paralysis-related mental states. Exploratory lesion analysis results revealed some of the hypothesised lesions, but also unexpected white matter disconnections in the posterior body and splenium of the corpus collosum associated with a self-referent perspective-taking in paralysis-related ToM stories. The study has implications for the multi-layered nature of body awareness, including abstract, social perspectives and beliefs about the body., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Neuropsychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.)