Balancing in dreams: Effects of playing games on the Wii balance board on dream content

Abstract

Based on the continuity hypothesis of dreams, elements of waking life should be incorporated into nocturnal dreams. The purpose of the current research is to build upon previous studies and investigate the effect of a gross motor balancing task on dream content. Thirteen (13) university students played balancing games on the Wii balance board for two hours. They were then monitored in the laboratory during their sleep using polysomnography. Dream reports were collected from the participants’ second REM-phase onwards. A total of 36 dreams were collected.  Of those, seven dreams (19.4%) were subjectively reported to contain elements of balance, but only two of them (5.6%) were confirmed by external judges. In contrast, 17 dreams (47.2%) contained laboratory references. Additionally, as an exploratory analysis, task performance before sleep and task performance after sleep were compared. The seven participants who reported dreams containing elements of balancing did not perform better than the other participants. Thus, the results obtained imply that the motor task had some influence on participants’ dreams (7 dreams), and in total, consolidation effects were limited.