Sleep extension: an explanation for increased pandemic dream recall?

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically impacted the lifestyle of individuals across the globe In many countries, nationally instituted shelter-in-place orders and closures of non-essential businesses have left many without employment and have forced others to work from home These policy shifts have changed or removed the socially- and occupationally imposed demands that typically influence sleep schedules Lifestyle and schedule changes that have stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic have not gone unnoticed to those in the sleep research and sleep medicine communities The authors posit that the three phenomena described above-longer sleep, more fragmented sleep, and frequent/vivid dream recall- are not coincidental Instead, these sleep behaviors might all be caused by naturalistic "sleep extension," which is defined as the act of extending one's sleep duration beyond habitual levels Sleep extension has been used as a research tool for decades, and, more recently, has been implemented in both controlled and applied research settings as a means to "bank" sleep (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)