What is a dream?
A dream is defined as a succession of images, emotions, ideas and sensations that occur, in most cases, involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep
Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep—when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. This links in with lucid dreaming here.
Dream are largely viewed upon and not particpated in. A dream may have you in it or a series of others, but you have no control over what happens, whereas a lucid dream is when you ‘wake up’ in the dream with awareness and a sense of control, see here.
REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. In addition, more active dreams involve body movement, speech (if you have seen someone in an active dream they sometimes talk, laugh, give verbal warnings and their body moves more.
Dreams may occur during other stages of sleep, often sometimes you can wake up in the early hours after a vivid dream, go back to sleep and revisit your dream or start a new one.
The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[1] In general you are more likely to remember the dream if you wake during the REM phase. A tip is to keep a note book or dictaphone by your bed and make a quick note. You can do our free seven steps to lucid dream to learn how to understand your dreams better, visit here.
The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[2] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[3] Most dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses.
During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[4]
Dreams related to waking-life experiences are associated with REM theta activity, which suggests that emotional memory processing takes place in REM sleep.[5]
Intersting the difference between babies and the elderly. Babies spend almost half of their sleep dreaming, while the elderly spend less than a fifth.
Blind people dream in other senses, especially if they lost their sight before the age of seven.
1 – Hobson, J.A. (2009). “REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
2 – Empson, J. (2002). Sleep and dreaming (3rd ed.).
3 – Cherry, Kendra. (2015). “10 Facts About Dreams: What Researchers Have Discovered About Dreams
4 – Ann, Lee (January 27, 2005). “HowStuffWorks “Dreams: Stages of Sleep””.
5 – Eichenlaub, Jean-Baptiste; van Rijn, Elaine; Gaskell, M Gareth; Lewis, Penelope A; Maby, Emmanuel; Malinowski, Josie E; Walker, Matthew P; Boy, Frederic; (2018-06-01).
