Interesting Facts about Dreams

Dreaming is  interesting most and mysterious experiences in our lives.

-->You Forget 90% of Your Dreams

Within 5 minutes of waking half of your dream is forgotten. Within 10 minutes, 90% of dream is forgotten.

-->Blind People also Dream

People who are not blind by birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally  involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion which are experiences of their life.

-->Some people only dream in black and white

Some people dream only in black and white while about 70% of people dream in colors. Certain dreams are very common to some people such as, failing an exam, getting up late for the exam, dreams related to one's school, seeing a person dead who is alive in real life, being chased by someone etc. Studies are being conducted in the relevance of colors and repeated sequences in dreams.

 -->Dreams speak in indirect language

Dreams never utilize symbols they actually stand for. A lot of research has already gone into the subject and books have been written on dream symbols and their interpretations. Dreams carry deep meanings that only the subconscious mind can understand.

-->Everybody Dreams

Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder). If you think you are not dreaming – you just forget your dreams.

-->In Our Dreams We Only See Faces That We already Know

Our mind is not inventing faces – in our dreams we see real faces of real people that we have seen during our life but may not know or remember. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces throughout our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.

-->Not Everybody Dreams in Color

A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. 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.

-->Dreams are Symbolic

If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. Whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol for itself.

(bamboo for h.koppdelaney)

-->Emotions

The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Negative emotions are more common than positive ones.

-->You can have four to seven dreams in one night.

On average you can dream anywhere from one or two hours every night.

 

-->Animals Dream Too

Studies have been done on many different animals, and they all show the same brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Watch a dog sleeping sometime. The paws move like they are running and they make yipping sounds as if they are chasing something in a dream.

-->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 in order 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.

-->Dream Incorporation

Our mind interprets the external stimuli that our senses are bombarded with when we are asleep and make them a part of our dreams. This means that sometimes in our dreams we hear a sound from reality and incorporate it in a way. For example you may be dreaming that you are in a concert while your brother is playing a guitar during your sleep.

-->Men and Women Dream Differently

Men tend to dream more about other men. Around 70% of the characters in a man’s dream are other men. On the other hand, a woman’s dream contains almost an equal number of men and women. Aside from that, men generally have more aggressive emotions in their dreams than the female lot.

-->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%.

*Precognition, also called future sight, refers to perception that involves the acquisition of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information.

-->If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming.

This fact is repeated all over the Internet, but I’m a bit suspicious whether it’s really true as I haven’t found any scientific evidence to support it.