Smell roses to dream sweet

New York: Can the smell of rotten eggs or roses change the type of dream you have? Quite possibly, says new research.

German researchers are reporting that when people smelled the scent of rotten eggs while sleeping, the nature of their dreams turned decidedly negative, while those who got a whiff of the scent of roses had more positive dreams.

"We were able to stimulate the sleeper with high concentrations of positively and negatively smelling odours and measure if the stimuli were incorporated into the dreams and changed the emotional tone of dreams," said the study's lead author, Dr Boris Stuck of Heidelberg University.

"We found that the sleeper hardly ever dreamed of smelling something. Nevertheless, the emotional tone of the dream did change depending on the stimulation," he said.