Here are some of the most interesting facts about dreams – enjoy and what’s most important, don’t forget to share your dream stories in the comment section.
1. You Forget 90% of Your Dreams
Half of your dream is forgotten within 5 minutes of waking. You forget 90% of your dream within 10 minutes. Freud theorized that we forget our dreams because they contain our repressed thoughts and wishes and so we shouldn't want to remember them anyway.
2. Blind People also Dream
Blind people also dream, though in their own way. People who became 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.
3. Everybody Dreams
Dream is common to every human being. Every human being dreams except in cases of extreme psychological disorder. If one thinks that he/she is not dreaming – he/she is actually forgetting his/her dreams.
4. We See Familiar Faces in Our 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. If the faces seem to be unfamiliar then its just because of the fact that we no longer remember them.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Dreams Often Feature Intense Emotions
One of the major characteristics of dreams is that the emotions experienced in dreams can be intense, painful and acute. The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Negative emotions are more common than positive ones.
8. You can have Several Dreams
You can dream several times in a single night. One can have four to seven dreams in just one night. On average one can dream between one and two hours every night.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
