Top 10 Amazing Facts About Dreams

Top 10 Amazing Facts About Dreams

Published on November 14, 2007 - 262 Comments

This afternoon I had a (very rare) nap. During that nap I had a lucid dream (most of which I no longer remember). As I was waking up, I was thinking about my dream and thought that it would be a great idea to write a list about dreams for the site. So, here are the top 10 amazing facts about dreams.

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. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having had a fantastic dream (likely opium induced) - 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. Part way through (54 lines in fact) he was interrupted by a “Person from Porlock“. Coleridge returned to his poem but could not remember the rest of his dream. The poem was never completed.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
[…]

Curiously, Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the story of Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde whilst he was dreaming. Wikipedia has more on that here. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also the brainchild of a dream.

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. 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.

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. 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. [Source]

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. [Source]

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. Additionally, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: “Among 293 smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having at least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt. Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as 97% of subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence was significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms.” [Source]

2. External Stimuli Invade our Dreams

This is called Dream Incorporation and 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. My own experience of this includes repeatedly drinking a large glass of water in the dream which satisfies me, only to find the thirst returning shortly after - this thirst… drink… thirst… loop often recurs until I wake up and have a real drink. The famous painting above (Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening) by Salvador Dali, depicts this concept.

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. According to the Wikipedia article on dreaming, “Glands begin to secrete a hormone that helps induce sleep and neurons send signals to the spinal cord which cause the body to relax and later become essentially paralyzed.”

Bonus: Extra Facts

1. When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.
2. 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.
3. 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.

10条关于梦的惊人事实

10条关于梦的惊人事实

发布时间：2007年11月14日

今天下午我——非常少见地——小睡了一会。睡着时做了一个记得很清楚的梦（大多数时候我都把梦忘了）。我起来的时候想了会儿做的梦，觉得如果写一篇关于梦的文章还是个不错的主意。所以，下面就是“10条关于梦的惊人事实”。

10.盲人也做梦

如果是在出生后才变盲的是可以在他们的梦里看见图像的。有的人在出生时就是盲人，从没看过任何图像，但是可以在梦里同样感同身受到那些通过声音、气味、触觉和情绪得来的感觉。这一点对于可视的人确实很难想象，但是当身体对睡眠需求很强烈时，事实上就会调动一切身体的状态来做出梦来。

9.你会忘掉梦的90%内容

起来5分钟后，你就忘掉了做过的梦的一半。10分钟后，90%都忘了。有一首著名的诗是这样写成的，Samuel Taylor Coleridge一天早晨起来做了个奇妙的梦（貌似是由于吸食鸦片引发的），他落笔开始阐述“梦之景”，则后来成为英国最著名的诗歌之一：《忽必烈汗》。诗中（全诗共54行）被一个“波洛克来的人”所打断。然后Coleridge又回到了诗中，但是却记不得梦的余下的部分。这首诗成了永远的残稿。

忽必列汗在上都曾经
下令造一座堂皇的安乐殿堂：
这地方有圣河亚佛流奔，
穿过深不可测的洞门，
直流入不见阳光的海洋。

（译注：本段诗选自屠岸翻译的《忽必烈汗》）

奇怪的是，Robert Louis Stevenson的《化身博士》（译注：此处原文作者将书名打错）这篇小说也是在做梦时候想到的。维基百科载有更详尽的描述。Mary Shelley的《弗兰肯斯坦》也是源自梦中。

8.人人皆有梦

人人都有梦——除了那些罹患极端精神障碍的人。但是男人的和女人的梦是不同的，生理反应也不一样。男人做的梦都有关其他男人，而女人会既梦到男人也梦到女人。另外，不论男女，他们所做的梦都会与性有关——无论是否是“春梦”。男人做梦会勃起，女人则会增多经血的流量。

7.梦使人避免精神障碍

在一份最近的睡眠研究中，被研究者载每次梦开始时就被叫醒，但依然使其睡够8小时。3天后他们会产生注意力不集中、易怒、出现幻觉，甚至精神障碍的征兆。最终让他们进入深度睡眠（译注：REM sleep，快速动眼睡眠），被研究者的大脑在深度睡眠期间大幅度地休整恢复那些在以前受损的部分。[来源]

6.梦到的，知道的

我们的梦里经常全是些特定场景下的陌生人——你是否知道你的大脑是不会创造面孔的，他们全都是你曾在生活中见到，却不认识或不记得的真实的人？你上次梦到的那个邪恶杀手，或许是你小时候见过的、曾经偷走爸爸汽车里汽油的那个家伙。我们一辈子要见到成千上万幅面孔，所以我们的脑中会有取之不尽用之不竭的人物用来造梦。

5.不是人人的梦都有色彩

有12%的可视者的梦完全是黑白的。剩下的人的梦是全彩色的。人们会倾向于做同样主题的梦，比如学校里的遭遇、被人追求、做事做的不好（或者还可以）、性经历、事情不顺利、迟到、活着的人死去、掉牙、飞翔、考试失利、车祸……现在还不知道做彩色梦的人梦到关于暴力或死亡时受到的情绪冲击，比那些做黑白梦的人是否影响更烈一些。[来源]

4.梦与现实并不同

如果你做了某个特定主题的梦，这并不是说梦就与那件具体的事情有关。梦是用一种深度象征的语言来的表达。头脑无意识地拿你的梦与其他的事情相比，差不多就是这样的。这就像，写一首诗说“一群蚂蚁同一架永不停歇的机器一样”。但是你永远不会一件东西和它自己去比，比如说“美丽的落日啊就像美丽的落日一样”。所以，不论梦选了什么作为象征，其实是与这件事情本身完全不同的。

3.暂时戒烟者会做更生动的梦

一个人长时间吸烟之后戒掉，据报道会比平时做更多生动的梦。另外，根据《变态心理学杂志》（the Journal of Abnormal Psychology）报道：“293名吸烟者禁烟1至4周，33%病例报道至少一次做的梦涉及吸烟。病例的大多数梦中，与他们自己吸烟有关，并感受到强烈的如惊恐、内疚的消极情绪。与吸烟有关的梦是香烟被收回引起的，约97%的病例在吸烟时不会做那样的梦，这些梦的出现与禁烟的持续有极大关系。这些梦认定比普通的梦更为生动，在大多数香烟被收回时的症候中普遍出现。”[来源]

2.外部刺激侵入我们的梦

这是一种我们大多数人曾有过的经历：从真实世界中听到的声音会以某种方式混进我们的梦里，这个被称为“梦混入”。类似的例子（虽然不是完全来自外部）是，当你身体感到渴你的大脑会把这种感觉混入梦里。我自己的经历还包括一次我在梦里不断地喝一杯又一杯的水，刚觉得舒服很快又非常渴——渴……喝水……渴……不断循环往复，直到我起来喝了真正的一杯水。上面这幅达利的名画（《在醒前一秒因蜜蜂围着石榴飞而引起的梦》），描述的就是这个概念。

1.你睡觉时是瘫痪的

信不信由你，你的身体在睡觉时是瘫痪的——大概是为了防止你的身体从梦的边界跑出来。根据维基百科的“梦”条目：“腺体开始分泌一种辅助睡眠的激素，神经元向脊髓发出信号，这使得身体放松，并在稍后使之实际上瘫痪了。”

额外奖励：其他的事实

1.打呼噜时就没有做梦
2.婴幼儿直到3岁前后才会做梦。从那时起，儿童大都会比成人做更多的噩梦，直到7、8岁的时候。
3.如果你从深度睡眠（译注：REM sleep，快速动眼睡眠）中醒来时，要比从一整夜的完整睡眠中醒来时，更有可能以一种更生动的方式记得所做的梦