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.
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.
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.
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. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt.
2. External Stimuli Invade our Dreams:
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.
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.
Extra Facts:
When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.
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.
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.
