The images, scenes, or stories that play out in your mind during slumber are always present during REM sleep. We have dubbed them dreams, and they can make our nighttime rest periods exciting, confusing, mystifying, and even terrifying at times.
While you are trying
to interpret what your dreams last night meant, here are 11 fun facts about the
incredible dream activity that you experience each night:
1. You can learn while you dream.
While you dream,
your brain is busy honing problem solving skills and learning. If you are
perfecting a new skill or studying new information, then good sleep, complete
with dreams, can help you learn more quickly.
2. You Forget 90% of Your Dreams
Within 5 minutes of
waking half of your dream is forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone. Remembering
dreams can be difficult but there are few ways to do it. One is keeping a dream
journal and trying to play back and note down everything that you can remember
when you wake up. Keeping a regular dream journal will strengthen your
cognitive abilities and train your mind to remember dreams better in the
future.
3. Premonition dreams
There are some
astounding cases where people actually dreamt about things which happened to
them later, in the exact same ways they dreamed about.
You could say they got a glimpse of the future, or it might have just been coincidence. The fact remains that this is some seriously interesting and bizarre phenomena. Some of the most famous premonition dreams include:
- Abraham Lincoln dreamt of His Assassination
- Many of the victims of 9/11 had dreams warning them about the catastrophe
- Mark Twain’s dream of his brother’s demise
- 19 verified precognitive dreams about the Titanic catastrophe
4. Dreams happen more in the morning
Dreams can happen at
any time during sleep. However, more dreams occur in the morning. That's why we
often feel that our dreams are very short and suddenly it's morning. Dreams rarely
occur at night because we do not necessarily sleep in REM conditions.
5. Children have more nightmares
Compared to adults,
children have more nightmares every night. This can happen because children
have quite a lot of fear of many things. Because they often have nightmares,
some children often ask to be accompanied while sleeping so they don't have the
same dream.
6. Your mind is more
active while you are dreaming than when you’re awake.
Even though your
body is resting while you sleep, your mind is more active than when you’re
awake. During dreams, your mind is learning, solving problems, and also filing,
sorting, and making sense of all the information you absorbed in your waking
hours.
7. Dyreams recharge your creativit
Sleep recharges your
body, and dreams recharge your creativity. According to the American
Psychological Association, this is because dreams actually resemble creativity.
As the brain problem solves during dreams it actually mimics the creative,
waking thought process. For this reason, many artists are more likely to be
stimulated by their dreams, and think with more creativity while awake.
8. Dream drug
There are actually
people who like dreaming and dreams so much that they never want to wake up.
They want to continue on dreaming even during the day, so they take an illegal
and extremely potent hallucinogenic drug called Dimethyltryptamine. It is
actually only an isolated and synthetic form of the chemical our brains produce
naturally during dreaming.
9. Unbelievable sleepwalkers
Sleepwalking is a
very rare and potentially dangerous sleep disorder. It is an extreme form of
REM sleep disorder, and these people don’t just act out their dreams, but go on
real adventures at night.
Lee Hadwin is a nurse by profession, but in his dreams he is an artist. Literally. He “sleepdraws” gorgeous portraits, of which he has no recollection afterwards. Strange sleepwalking “adventures” include:
- A woman having sex with strangers while sleepwalking
- A man who drove 22 miles and killed his cousin while sleepwalking
- A sleepwalker who walked out of the window from the third floor, and barely survived
10. Not Everybody Dreams in Color
Whilst everyone has
different concepts of what dreams look like, a full 12% of sighted people dream
exclusively in black and white. The remaining number have full-color dreams.
Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s maintained that the majority of dreams
were in black and white, but these results began to change in the 1960s. Today
only 4.4% of the dreams of under-25 year-olds are in black and white. Recent
research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch
from black-and-white film and TV to color media.
11. Precognitive Dreams
Results of several
surveys across large population sets indicate that between 18% and 38% of
people have experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have
experienced déjà vu. The percentage of persons that believe precognitive
dreaming is possible is even higher – ranging from 63% to 98%.
12. REM sleep disorder
In the state of REM
(rapid-eye-movement) stage of your sleep your body is normally paralyzed. In
rare cases, however, people act out their dreams. These have resulted in broken
arms, legs, broken furniture, and in at least one reported case, a house burnt
down.
13. Body Paralysis
Rapid eye movement
(REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the
eyes. REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, about
90-120 minutes of a night’s sleep.
During REM sleep the
body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain to prevent the movements which
occur in the dream from causing the physical body to move. However, it is
possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal
sleep while the brain awakens. People who suffer from a stronger form of this –
known as sleep paralysis – often report being unable to move whilst being both
half awake and simultanously in a dream state.
Well, I hope you had a great time reading these strange facts about our dreams. Now I’m going to my bed to check those facts once again. Good night and sweet dreams!
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