10 Interesting Facts You Didn't Know About Dreams

A 'dream' is a term that describes a subconscious experience consisting of a sequence of images, sounds, ideas, emotions and other sensations that usually occur during the REM sleep. Here are some things you didn't know about dreams:

10. Blind people dream

People who are blind are able to see images during sleep. Those who are born blind do not see images when sleeping, but they often have other sensations when they sleep (they perceive different smells, sounds and emotions). When their body is tired, the brain can generate virtually all the physical senses.

9. People forget over 90% of their dreams

In the first five minutes of awakening, half of our dreams are forgotten. In 10 minutes, over 90% are completely forgotten. The famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge woke up one morning after a wonderful dream (an opium-induced dream) and started to write about his dream. Later this description became one of the most famous poems in the world: Kubla Khan. After he wrote 54 verses, he was interrupted by someone for a short time. When the poet wanted to continue his work, he was unable to remind the dream he had. The poem was never finished.

8. Everybody dreams

Every human being dreams (excepting those who suffer from serious mental disorders), but men and women have different dreams and different physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women dream equally about men and women. Also, both women and men have sexual reactions even if the dream is not an erotic one. Sometimes men have an erection while women experience an increase in blood flow from the vagina.

7. Dreams prevent psychosis

In a recent study about sleep, subjects who were awakened before they started to dream have experienced irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days. It must be mentioned that they were allowed to sleep 8 hours per night. When they entered into the state of REM, their brain tried to recover the time lost through a prolonged REM.

6. We only dream what we know and what we knew in the past

Our dreams are frequently full of strangers who play different roles- our mind doesn't create or imagine those faces- they represent pictures of real people we met, even if we can't remember them. Each of us has seen tens of thousands of faces in life, so we have an infinite number of characters that we can see and perceive when dreaming.

5. Not everyone dreams in colors

Approximately 12% of all people dream exclusively in black and white. The others have colorful dreams. Those who dream in black and white tend to have dreams on common themes such as situations related to school or work, sexual experiences, death, etc. It is unknown the impact of a nightmare on these people compared to those who dream in colors.

4. Dreams have a symbolic meaning

If you dream about a certain fact it doesn't mean that your dream necessarily describes that fact. Dreams have a deep symbolic connotation. Our subconscious tries to compare images from the dream with something similar that happens in the real life.

3. Those who give up smoking, alcohol or drugs have more vicious dreams

People who have smoked cigarettes for a long time and gave up this habit reported a greater number of vicious dreams than those who haven't passed through this experience. At the same time, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: 'From 293 cigarette smokers who quitted this vice within 4 weeks, 33% admitted that they had at least 1 dream about smoking.'

In most cases, subjects dreamed that they were caught smoking and felt negative emotions such as panic and guilt. Only those who already stopped smoking had these dreams, since 97% of them have not experienced such dreams before.

2. External stimuli invade our dreams

This phenomenon is experienced by most people. A familiar sound is perceived during sleep, being integrated in a certain context. Thirst is a good example. If you dream that you're drinking a large glass of water, you stop feeling thirsty for a short time. However, this sensation eventually forces you to wake up and hydrate your body.

1. We are paralyzed during sleep

Even though it's hard to believe, our body is virtually paralyzed during sleep. This process aims to stop any action of the body during sleep. A Wikipedia article says that some glands in our body begin to secrete a hormone which induces drowsiness and neurons send signals to the spinal cord, thus forcing the body to relax and later become paralyzed.

Sources: library.thinkquest.org/5698/itad.htm , www.spiritual.com.au/.../dreams/dreams-facts.htm, www.tastyhuman.com/13-interesting-facts-about-dreams, www.analysedreams.co.uk/FactsAboutDreams.html