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Interesting Facts You Did NOT Know About Dreams
Dr. Robert Stickgold, Director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School notes that during REM sleep, when dreaming typically occurs, the release of the neurotransmitter serotonin is shut off in the brain. The only other time that happens is because of LSD, when people seem to have these totally uninteresting experiences they describe as profoundly meaningful called ‘acid insights.
“Who knows why, for instance, fireworks often seem to trigger it — maybe there’s something about the geometric patterns that evokes this sense of awesomeness, the feeling that we can almost understand something amazing but not quite that drives us to seek a better understanding of things. It’s like what you feel during a religious experience — you sense the oneness of mankind.”
You Forget 90% of Your Dreams
Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10 minutes, 90% is gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having had a fantastic dream, 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.
Blind People also 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.
Men and Women Dream Differently
Every human being dreams 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.
You Can Experience an 0rgasm in Your Dream
You can not only have s e x as pleasurable as in your real life while dreaming, but also experience an o r g a s m as strong as a real one without any wet results. The sensations felt while lucid dreaming can be as pleasurable and strong as the sensations experienced in the real world.
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? 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.
Not Everybody Dreams in Color
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 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.
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
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.
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%.
If You Are Snoring, Then You Can Not 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.
Note: 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)
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