10 Facts About Dreams

10. Blind People Dream

People who become blind after birth can see images in their dreams.
People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams
equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and
emotion. It is hard for a seeing person to imagine, but the body’s need
for sleep is so strong that it is able to handle virtually all physical
situations to make it happen.

9. You Forget 90% of your Dreams

Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10,
90% is gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one
morning having had a fantastic dream (likely opium induced) - he put pen
to paper and began to describe his “vision in a dream” in what has
become one of English’s most famous poems: Kubla Khan. Part way
through (54 lines in fact) he was interrupted by a “Person from Porlock“.
Coleridge returned to his poem but could not remember the rest of his
dream. The poem was never completed.

8. Everybody Dreams

Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological
disorder) but men and women have different dreams and different
physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other men, while
women tend to dream equally about men and women. In addition, both
men and women experience sexually related physical reactions to their
dreams regardless of whether the dream is sexual in nature; males
experience erections and females experience increased ******l blood flow.

7. Dreams Prevent Psychosis

In a recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of
each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced
difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of
psychosis after only 3 days. When finally allowed their REM sleep the
student’s brains made up for lost time by greatly increasing the
percentage of sleep spent in the REM stage. [Source]

6. We Only Dream of What We Know

Our dreams are frequently full of strangers who play out certain parts -
did you know that your mind is not inventing those faces - they are real
faces of real people that you have seen during your life but may not know
or remember? The evil killer in your latest dream may be the guy who
pumped petrol in to your Dad’s car when you were just a little kid. We
have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces through our lives, so we
have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our
dreams.

5. Not Everyone Dreams in Color

A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The
remaining number dream in full color. People also tend to have common
themes in dreams, which are situations relating to school, being chased,
running slowly/in place, sexual experiences, falling, arriving too late, a
person now alive being dead, teeth falling out, flying, failing an
examination, or a car accident. It is unknown whether the impact of a
dream relating to violence or death is more emotionally charged for a
person who dreams in color than one who dreams in black and white.
[Source]

4. Dreams are not about what they are about

If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream
is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. The
unconscious mind tries to compare your dream to something else, which
is similar. Its like writing a poem and saying that a group of ants were like
machines that never stop. But you would never compare something to
itself, for example: “That beautiful sunset was like a beautiful sunset”. So
whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol
for itself.

3. Quitters have more vivid dreams

People who have smoked cigarettes for a long time who stop, have
reported much more vivid dreams than they would normally experience.
Additionally, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: “Among
293 smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having
at least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught
themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and
guilt. Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as
97% of subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence
was significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as
more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major
tobacco withdrawal symptoms.” [Source]

2. External Stimuli Invade our Dreams

This is called Dream Incorporation and it is the experience that most of us have had where a sound from reality is heard in our dream and incorporated in some way. A similar (though less external) example would be when you are physically thirsty and your mind incorporates that feeling in to your dream. My own experience of this includes repeatedly drinking a large glass of water in the dream which satisfies me, only to find the thirst returning shortly after - this thirst… drink… thirst… loop often recurs until I wake up and have a real drink. The famous painting above (Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening) by Salvador Dali, depicts this concept.

1. You are paralyzed while you sleep

Believe it or not, your body is virtually paralyzed during your sleep - most
likely to prevent your body from acting out aspects of your dreams.
According to the Wikipedia article on dreaming, “Glands begin to secrete
a hormone that helps induce sleep and neurons send signals to the spinal
cord which cause the body to relax and later become essentially
paralyzed.”

Bonus: Extra Facts

1. When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.
2. Toddlers do not dream about themselves until around the age of 3.
From the same age, children typically have many more nightmares than
adults do until age 7 or 8.
3. If you are awakened out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you are
more likely to remember your dream in a more vivid way than you would
if you woke from a full night sleep..