‘CBS Sunday Morning’ to interview professor on nightmares related to COVID-19

Mississippi State University announced on Wednesday that a faculty member specializing in behavioral sleep issues will speak to a nationally-televised audience Sunday, May 17, to discuss nightmares induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“CBS Sunday Morning” airs from 8 a.m. until 10:30 a.m., and will interview Michael R. Nadorff, an associate professor in MSU’S Department of Psychology, on his thoughts and expertise related to the global pandemic and its effect on sleep patterns, specifically dreams.

Nadorff directs the university’s Sleep, Suicide and Aging Laboratory and also leads the department’s clinical

PH.D. program.

Nadorff said he views odd or disturbing Covid-related dreams “as being related to anxiety, stress and rumination,” and points to a hypothesis called activation-synthesis for his reasoning.

“Basically, the hypothesis states that during dreams a lot of brain activation occurs, in part because you have a lot of memory consolidation occurring during REM sleep. It is one of the prime times for your memories to be stored in long-term memory,” he said. “A few things are happening at the same time—old memories are being pulled up and refreshed, and new memories are being encoded. Your brain tries to put this together in a story that makes sense. This is why you can have dreams where something that happened yesterday gets blended with something that happened 20 years ago.”

Nadorff went on to say that during the quarantine period, people have encountered new worries and anxieties, which are impacting dreams.

“Our lives are different now, and many of us feel like we are living the same day over and over again,” Nadorff said. “Because of this, the things that are notable, the things that are different, stand out more, and those may be the latest news headlines, or the latest worries.”