Sergio Arthuro Mota-Rolim

Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil · Brain Institute and University Hospital

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify and name the pitch of a sound without external reference. Often, accuracy and speed at naming isolated musical pitches are correlated with demographic, biological, and acoustical parameters to gain insight into the genesis and evolution of this ability in specific cohorts. However, the majority of thos...

Sleep paralysis (SP) is a dissociative state that occurs mainly during awakening. SP is characterized by altered motor, perceptual, emotional and cognitive functions, such as inability to perform voluntary movements, visual hallucinations, feelings of chest pressure, delusions about a frightening presence and, in some cases, fear of impending death...

Introduction - Lucid dreaming (LD) is a mental state in which the subject is aware of being dreaming and may control the oneiric content. LD is objectively confirmed by series of pre-arranged ocular movements (PAOM) performed by the dreamer to indicate lucidity. Most studies observed that LD correlates with specific neurophysiological characteristi...

During sleep, humans experience the offline images and sensations that we call dreams, which are typically emotional and lacking in rational judgment of their bizarreness. However, during lucid dreaming (LD), subjects know that they are dreaming, and may control oneiric content. Dreaming and LD features have been studied in North Americans, Europea...

Several lines of evidence converge to the idea that rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) is a good model to foster our understanding of psychosis. Both REMS and psychosis course with internally generated perceptions and lack of rational judgment, which is attributed to a hyperlimbic activity along with hypofrontality. Interestingly, some individuals can...

Background Preliminary data suggests that obesity might hasten the decline in mRNA vaccine-induced immunity against SARS-CoV-2. However, whether this renders individuals with obesity more susceptible to long COVID symptoms post-vaccination remains uncertain. Given sleep’s critical role in immunity, exploring the associations between obesity, probab...

The association between nightmare frequency (NMF) and suicidal ideation (SI) is well known, yet the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this relation is inconsistent. This study aimed to investigate changes in NMF, SI, and their association during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in 16 countries using a harmonised questionnaire. The sample...

A paralisia do sono (PS) é um estado dissociativo que ocorre principalmente durante o despertar. A PS caracteriza-se por uma alteração das funções motoras, perceptivas, emocionais e cognitivas, como a incapacidade de realizar movimentos voluntários, alucinações visuais, delírios sobre uma presença assustadora, sensação de pressão no peito, falta de...

Recent studies have begun to understand sleep not only as a whole-brain process but also as a complex local phenomenon controlled by specific neurotransmitters that act in different neural networks, which is called “local sleep”. Moreover, the basic states of human consciousness—wakefulness, sleep onset (N1), light sleep (N2), deep sleep (N3), and...

The COVID-19 pandemic changed people’s lives all over the world. While anxiety and stress decreased sleep quality for most people, an increase in total sleep time was also observed in certain cohorts. Dream recall frequency also increased, especially for nightmares. However, to date, there are no consistent reports focusing on pandemic-related chan...

Introduction A growing number of studies have demonstrated that the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has severely affected sleep and dream activity in healthy people. To date, no investigation has examined dream activity specifically in COVID-19 patients. Methods As part of the International COVID-19 Sleep Study (ICOSS), we compared 544...

This protocol paper describes the second survey produced by the International Covid Sleep Study (ICOSS) group with the aim to examine the associations between SARS-CoV-2 infection and sleep, sleepiness, and circadian problems as potential predisposing factors for more severe COVID-19 disease profile and for development of Long-COVID in the general...

Depression is a mood disorder with profound negative effects on the individual’s quality of life and augmented suicidal risks. Despite substantial progress in the development of new antidepressants that have been made in the last decades, remission rates are modest, around 50% after the first treatment. Besides, antidepressants usually take about 2...

The first philosopher who referred to lucid dreaming (LD) was Aristotle, who pointed out that something in the dreamers’ consciousness tells them they are dreaming. In the Middle Ages, Aquinas commented that while asleep a man may judge that what he sees is a dream. During enlightenment, Reid alleged that he experienced waking-like cognition during...

Editorial on Frontiers Research Topic. We aimed to organize a discussion forum on current trends in LD research to foster future collaborations and enhance our understanding of lucid dreaming (LD) and human consciousness. We welcomed seventeen submissions of which sixteen were published: 6 original research studies, 2 reviews, 7 opinions, and 1 per...

Editorial on Frontiers Research Topic. We aimed to organize a discussion forum on current trends in LD research to foster future collaborations and enhance our understanding of lucid dreaming (LD) and human consciousness. We welcomed seventeen submissions of which sixteen were published: 6 original research studies, 2 reviews, 7 opinions, and 1 per...

Lucid dreaming (LD) began to be scientifically studied in the last century, but various religions have highlighted the importance of LD in their doctrines for a much longer period. Hindus’ manuscripts dating back over 2,000 years ago, for example, divide consciousness in waking, dreaming (including LD), and deep sleep. In the Buddhist tradition, Ti...

Dream reports collected after rapid eye movement sleep (REM) awakenings are, on average, longer, more vivid, bizarre, emotional and story-like compared to those collected after non-REM. However, a comparison of the word-to-word structural organization of dream reports is lacking, and traditional measures that distinguish REM and non-REM dreaming ma...

Dream reports collected after rapid eye movement sleep (REM) awakenings are, on average, longer, more vivid, bizarre, emotional and story-like compared to those collected after non-REM. However, a comparison of the word-to-word structural organization of dream reports is lacking, and traditional measures that distinguish REM and non-REM dreaming ma...

One of the main current challenges in lucid dreaming (LD) research is to develop a simple and reliable way to induce it (Stumbrys et al., 2012). This is because, for most people, LD is very pleasurable but also very rare (LaBerge and Rheingold, 1990; Mota-Rolim et al., 2013). Along with its recreational nature, LD also has potential clinical applic...

Lucid dreaming refers to the phenomenon of becoming aware of the fact that one is dreaming during ongoing sleep. Despite having been physiologically validated for decades, the neurobiology of lucid dreaming is still incompletely characterized. Here we review the neuroscientific literature on lucid dreaming, including electroencephalographic, neuroi...

Background: Recent open-label trials show that psychedelics, such as ayahuasca, hold promise as fast-onset antidepressants in treatment-resistant depression. Methods: To test the antidepressant effects of ayahuasca, we conducted a parallel-arm, double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial in 29 patients with treatment-resistant depression. P...

Recent open label trials show that psychedelics, such as ayahuasca, hold promise as fast-onset antidepressants in treatment-resistant depression. In order to further test the antidepressant effects of ayahuasca, we conducted a parallel-arm, double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial in 29 patients with treatment-resistant depression. Patients...

Dreaming and psychosis share important features, such as intrinsic sense perceptions independent of external stimulation, and a general lack of criticism that is associated with reduced frontal cerebral activity. Awareness of dreaming while a dream is happening defines lucid dreaming (LD), a state in which the prefrontal cortex is more active than...

A experiência fora do corpo (EFC) é definida como uma sensação subjetiva de ter saído dos limites físicos do corpo, tendo uma longa história registrada em diversas culturas. Conhecida também como "desdobramento do espírito" ou "projeção astral" nos círculos esotéricos, a EFC é estreitamente ligada à autoscopia, que é a experiência do sujeito enxerg...

Para entender os sonhos, é preciso primeiro considerar que nos faltam as evidências diretas que emprestam plausibilidade evolutiva a tantas narrativas sobre o surgimento de estruturas ou processos biológicos. Trabalha-se na completa ausência de registros paleontológicos sobre a neurofisiologia e a neuroanatomia das espécies ancestrais, pois crânios...

A imagem de nós cientistas no senso comum, como estereotipada por Einstein, é que somos meio loucos. De fato, como revelado recentemente pela revista Nature, parece que realmente não temos uma boa saúde mental, dada a alta ocorrência de depressão entre pós-graduandos e pós-doutorandos.

Lucid dreaming (LD) is a mental state in which the subject is aware of being dreaming while dreaming. The prevalence of LD among Europeans, North Americans and Asians is quite variable (between 26 and 92%) (Stepansky et al., 1998; Schredl & Erlacher, 2011; Yu, 2008); in Latin Americans it is yet to be investigated. Furthermore, the neural bases of...

Introduction: Although several studies have shown differences in cognitive performance between men and women, it is not yet known whether these differences occur in tasks involving the free word association (WA). Objective: To compare the semantic distances between word pairs produced by WA between men and women. Method: We applied a WA task in 68...

Segundo Karl Pearson (1892): "In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world. Law in the scientific sense is thus essentially a product of the human mind and has no meaning apart from man." Desta forma, com base na importância que a consciência tem, não só para a neurociência mas para o pensamento científico em ger...

Neste artigo, inicialmente utilizamos uma abordagem socrática com o objetivo de definir o que é neurociência. A seguir, buscamos enfocar um tópico da neurociência que influencia diretamente a educação: o sono como agente direto dos processos de consolidação de memória e aprendizagem. Por fim, algumas dicas para se ter um sono de boa qualidade.

Recently, Allan Hobson published a brief essay in which he recognizes that lucid dreams are scientifically relevant and constitute a powerful tool for understanding the neurobiology of consciousness (Hobson, 2009). His statements are mostly based on the study by Voss et al. (2009), which employed refined mathematical analysis of electroencephalogra...

In mammals, the main biological clock that is synchronized by light is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus, which can be divided into two distinct regions: the ventrolateral and the dorsomedial. Both behave as separate oscillators that interact with each other to form the circadian rhythm. Methods: Our objective was to develo...

Background and objective: Good quality sleep and adequate amount of sleep are important in order to have better cognitive performance and avoid health problems and psychiatric disorders. Sleep-related disturbances affect a large percentage of university students and may cause impairments in their academic performance. Among the wide range of factor...

O desempenho acadêmico dos universitários, em particular dos estudantes de medicina, é um dos alicerces para uma boa qualificação profissional. Dentre os vários fatores que influenciam o desempenho, destacam-se os hábitos relacionados ao sono, como duração e regularidade do ciclo sono-vigília. Com o objetivo de investigar a influência dos horários...

Com o propósito de avaliar objetivamente a ansiedade (traço e estado) de uma turma de estudantes de medicina da UFRN, examinamos dois momentos: no primeiro, os estudantes estavam submetidos a um mesmo esquema temporal com início das aulas as 10 horas, todos os dias da semana (ciclo básico); no segundo, os estudantes estavam submetidos a um mesmo es...