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 vaginal 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.
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.
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."
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.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
10 Facts About Dreams
11:54 AM
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