25 Fascinating Facts About Dreams That Will Surprise You

let me tell you the most ordinary parts of our Lives often hide the wildest secrets and our dreams pack a punch for instance did you know that not dreaming might actually signal a psychiatric disorder or that during Ram sleep your body becomes temporarily paralyzed yep your body hits paw while your mind hits play and let's not forget the fever dream that gave birth to the Terminator brace yourselves because today I'm dipping Into The Surreal world of dreams I'm Mike with l25 and here are 25 fascinating facts about dreams that will surprise you 25 your brain

needs dreams to stay sane it's a fact your brain needs dreams to keep your sanity intact in a recent sleep study students who were woken up every time they started dreaming even though they got a full eight hours ended up with serious issues like concentration problems irritability and even hallucinations after just 3 days when they finally got their chance to dream undisturbed their brains made up for lost time by diving deep straight into REM sleep so make sure you catch those 8 hours tonight because your brain will thank you 24 your dreams might be the

key to solving your problems our dreams aren't just nightly escapades they might also be crucial in cracking some of life's toughest puzzles when we're deep in Dreamland our brains get a boost in abstract thinking pattern recognition and insight generation that can feel almost magical in fact many renowned inventors and artists have shared those aha moments that struck them while dreaming leading to groundbreaking ideas and Creations but don't hold your breath for science to deliver empirical evidence on a link between the two just yet 23 your dreams benefit your physical and mental health for starters they

help solidify what we've learned boosting memory and making recall easier in fact research shows that dreaming about a task can significantly enhance performance they're also great for emotional healing processing and lessening the sting of tough feelings on top of that if you're dreaming less it might signal sleep problems or health issues even nightmares play a role prepping us emotionally for potential challenges so they're essential for your mental and physical wellbe in just about every way hey guys just jumping in here real quick to tell you some exciting news you know how you love watching our

videos for amazing facts well what if I told you that you could also have 500 amazing facts in the palm of your hand that's right we wrote a book this one right here what the facts are you talking about and you can order it right now and have list 25 right in your library or on your coffee table or wherever it is you keep your books it's available right now on Amazon so click the link in the description and grab yourself and friends and family a copy today 22 quitters experience more vivid dreams when you

quit smoking it isn't just a lifestyle change it can also lead to some seriously vivid dreams many long-term smokers who kick the habit report a spike in dream intensity research published in the Journal of abnormal psychology reveals that a third of smokers abstinent for 1 to 4 weeks dreamt about smoking often feeling panic and guilt these dreams are linked to nicotine withdrawal and tend to be more Vivid compared to their usual dream experiences interestingly dreams about smoking are rare while still smoking and become a prominent feature of quitting almost as frequent has other major withdrawal

symptoms so if your dreams are taking a dramatic turn after quitting it's just your brain's way of processing the change 21 how men and women's dreams differ ever wonder how your dreams stack up against those of the opposite sex now Studies have revealed some fascinating differences women's dreams are more likely to feature both genders equally and tend to be longer with richer emotional content in contrast men's dreams often showcase predominantly male characters are more likely to involve violence cars and Roads interestingly 8% of all dreams include some kind of sexual activity in these types of

Dreams men frequently find themselves in public or unfamiliar places with strangers whereas women's dreams often include intimate settings like pools or lakes 20 the truth about lucid dreaming lucid dreaming is the ultimate cheat code you realize you're dreaming and suddenly you're in control want to fly sure sure you want superpowers why not it's no wonder so many people want to master it in fact entire books are dedicated to teaching you how to lucid dream on demand but according to Jane gackenbach from Grant MCU University your secret weapon might be video games she believes the skills

you develop in a game controlling environments awareness of space can spill over into your dreams making Gamers more likely to become Lucid plus gamers are less likely to have nightmares when faced with something scary they don't run they fight back and turn it into a challenge so game on even in your sleep 19 Freud's psychoanalytic theory of dreams I can't talk about dreams without bringing up Sigman Freud right while many of his ideas have been debunked Freud's work still holds a fascinating place in discussions about the human mind he believed that dreams were a window

into our unconscious revealing our deepest desires and suppressed instincts particularly those of an aggressive or sexual nature According to Freud our dreams have both manifest what we remember and latent the hidden meanings content it's in this latent content where Freud claimed to uncover all of our deepest taboo urges like say a weird attraction to our parents yeah Freud didn't hold back 18 we forget 90% of our dreams have you ever woke up and thought wow that was a wild dream only to lose it before you can even grab your phone you're not alone within just

5 minutes of waking half of our dreams disappear and by 10 minutes 90% of them are gone even famous poet Samuel Taylor kerid wasn't immune after a vivid like opium fueled dream he began writing kuon but was interrupted by a person from poock when he returned to his writing the rest of the dream had disappeared leaving the poem unfinished fun fact uh other literary Classics like Mary Shell's Frankenstein and Robert Le Stevens's Dr Jackal and Mr hind were also dream inspired so our dreams may fade fast but they fueled some of the world's most iconic

stories 17 the brainy side of dream recall why do some of us wake up with wild dream stories while the others can't recall a thing for most dream recall is a regular if fleeting experience about one to two dreams per week but for a small group around 1 in 250 people dreams are like blank tapes with no recollection at all it's it's not that these people don't dream rather they just don't remember them according to neuroscientist rapael vat dream recall is one of the last fronteers in our understanding of the mind while many factors from

personality traits to how we wake up impact whether we remember dreams there's still a lot to uncover one fun fact women tend to remember their dreams more often than men possibly due to social conditioning rather than biological differences fascinating right 16 lonely people have more dreams it turns out that being lonely might not just affect your waking hours but your sleep as well in 2001 neurologist Patrick McNamara found that people with insecure attachment Styles those less comfortable with intimacy and more likely to avoid relationships reported having more vivid dreams than those with secure attachment Styles

not only that but their dreams are often more morbid and intense magnamar study of 300 University students showed that loneliness seems to trigger more activity during REM sleep where dreams occur it's thought that the brain's anterior temporal cortex which plays a role in both attachment and REM sleep might be trying to compensate for a lack of social connection so if you're dreaming a lot more than usual your brain could be making up for emotional gaps 15 dreams and brain signals the activation synthesis model proposed in 1977 offers a fascinating look at how our brain creates

dreams instead of seeing dreams as things triggered by our daily experiences or memories this Theory suggests that they actually come from biological signals in the brain specifically it's the action of areas like the amydala part of the limpic system that Sparks our Dreamscape when these regions light up during sleep our brain does what it does best it tries to make sense of the chaos the result dreams 14 not everyone dreams in color you might be surprised to learn that 12% of people who can see perfectly well only dream in black and white and while the

themes of dreams are pretty Universal for all of us the thing being chased the teeth falling out or showing a blade somewhere important what's fascinating is how colorblind people dream if someone was born color blind their dream world matches the shade of black white and gray they've always known but if they lose their ability to see color later in life their past colorful memories can make their dreams Come Alive even those who can't tell Reds from Greens in real life often dream in Technicolor seeing the world as the rest of us do in our sleep

13 6 years of dreaming it might sound like a lot but on average we spend around 6 years of Our Lives dreaming that's right our wild nightly Adventures strange scenarios and occasional nightmares actually add up to quite a big chunk of time the worst or best part about all this is that we spend seven years of Our Lives just trying to fall asleep so I'm not really sure how I feel about that trade-off 12 Deja Vu dreams have you ever experienced the deja vu moment in your dreams according to those in the know it's surprisingly

common scientists believe Deja Vu and dreams might happen because our brains are blending different memories together so when you dream fragments from various experiences can merge making it feel like you're reliving a moment from the past another theory is that dreams act as simulations of real life scenarios so if your brain dreams up a situation similar to something you've experienced it can can trigger that Deja Vu sensation 11 your body freezes during REM sleep during REM or rapid eye movement sleep your body temporarily paralyzes itself and no I'm not describing a horror movie plot here

but rather a protective mechanism the paralysis known as rem or muscle aonia prevents you from acting out your dreams which can get pretty dangerous but here's where it gets creepy if you wake up during REM sleep while your body is still in this paralyzed state you can experience sleep paralysis in essence your brain will be awake while your body is trapped in sleep mode you might feel trapped see hallucinations or even feel a sense of danger interestingly some believe that the historical accounts of alien abductions could be explained by extreme cases of sleep paralysis all

in all while it can be unnerving it's just your brain trying to keep your dreams from taking over reality 10 you can't read in your dreams have you ever tried to read a book in your dreams if you did you probably found the text to be a jumbled mess or simply impossible to decipher that's because the brain regions responsible for language processing take a backseat while you sleep however if you're a poet writer or someone deeply immersed in language you might be one of the rare dreamers who can actually read or write in their dreams

for the rest of us dreams tend to be more about feelings and images than coherent text nine the schizophrenic side of Dreams dreams can be eerily similar to the experiences of people with schizophrenia in fact the brain activity we display during dreams often resembles the chaotic thought patterns of those with the mental health condition essentially people with schizophrenia have their dream switch stuck on the on position leading to a constant flow of disorganized thoughts both day and night when we dream our brains spin up strange and disconnected scenarios which can feel like a touch of

nightly Madness this is similar to the disorganized thinking that people with schizophrenia experience when they're awake so if you wake up from a particularly weird dream it's just a brief dip into the kind of mental chaos some people have to deal with all the time eight from dreams to Danger some people don't just dream they act out their dreams thanks to a condition called REM sleep behavior disorder or RBD when someone has RBD their body isn't paralyzed like it usually is during REM sleep so they can physically move and even perform their dreams this can

be risky especially if the dream involves Intense or violent scenes if you or someone you know is acting out dreams like this it's a good idea to seek treatment as proper care can help prevent injuries and keep those vivid dreams from spilling over into reality seven the dream creativity connection creativity and dreams go hand inand researchers have discovered that while most of us have vivid dreams those who rarely dream might find themselves lacking in creativity and problem solving skills dreams are believed to help with brainstorming and imaginative thinking so if you're not sure whether you

dream try to keeping a notebook by your bed as soon as you wake up jot down any fragments or feelings from your dreams before they slip away it might just level up your creativity six when you're being chased dreams where you're being chased can be downright terrifying the pursuer is usually anything from a menacing monster to an intimidating person or even a fearsome animal surprisingly this is one of the most common nightmare themes we all experience these dreams often point to something or someone in your Waking Life that's making you feel threatened it could even

be an emotion you're struggling with to uncover the source of your fear think about who or what the Chaser could be in your real life some clarity on the source of your fear could go a long way in keeping the nightmares at Bay five the faces in your dreams our brains don't have have the ability to create brand new faces While We're Dreaming so everyone who pops up in your dreams is someone you've encountered at some point whether you've met them in real life passed them on the street spotted them on TV or glimpsed them

on social media even if you don't consciously remember a face your brain keeps that image for future reference so the next time you dream about an unfamiliar face it's likely because they've crossed your path even if just fleetingly four you can change your dreams with different smells did you know that you can actually change your dreams with smells in one fascinating study researchers had participants sleep while they were exposed to different scents through a nasal tube rotten eggs roses or just nothing at all when they woke up and described their dreams those exposed to the

rotten egg smell found their dream experiences turned dark and unsettling even if the dream itself had nothing to do with the smell one participant even dreamed of a Chinese woman who suddenly seemed disgusted with her for no clear reason demonstrating how a simple scent can dramatically shift the emotional tone of a dream three the tiny dreamers babies spend so much time sleeping that we can't help but wander about their dreams and while it's impossible to get a straight answer from a baby scientists have some interesting insights into their dream life babies do have REM sleep

the stage of sleep where most of us dream so it's likely they dream too since babies brains are busy processing memories during this time scientists believe they're probably dreaming about familiar faces sounds and Sensations from their day-to-day lives or even Echoes from their time in the womb as for nightmares babies aren't having those just yet instead their Ram sleep might include some grimaces or small cries but these are usually just signs of hunger or needing a diaper change not bad dreams it's not until around the age of two that children start experiencing nightmares with Peak

nightmares matching up with the peak of their imagination around ages 3 to 6 two and and the Furry dreamers research from Cambridge University building on studies from MIT shows that animals do in fact dream they've even found that animals can have pretty complex dreams replaying memories or events from their waking hours now while we can't say for sure if animals dream exactly like we do we know they experience REM sleep the same stage where humans have their vivid dreams most mammals including dogs and cats get into REM sleep however it's not a universal trait for

example example egg laying mammals like platypuses don't birds also have REM sleep but reptiles and other coldblooded Critters do not interestingly the Akida only dreams if it's in a comfy 25° C environment Go Figure one the fever dream that birthed the Terminator what if I told you that one of the most iconic Sci-Fi movies was inspired by a fever dream the Terminator was conceived by James Cameron when he was in Rome working on Piranha 2 while suffering from a 39° C or 102° F fever in his dream he saw a futuristic world where a chrome

robot torso armed with kitchen knives dragged itself away from an explosion that Eerie image of a Relentless Unstoppable robotic assassin stuck with him Cameron wrote the idea down and the story evolved in the legendary hit the Terminator and the rest as they say is history and that's a wrap if today's facts blew your mind I'll just wait until you hear about the wild stuff we uncovered in our recent list called 25 crazy facts that'll shock you I discussed everything you never wanted to know about ancient Lube the explosive nature of the herpes virus and World

War III's poop bombs interested just click on the link right here and dive head first into the chaos you won't regret it possibly