15 mysteries about dreams finally revealed!

1. In childhood

During this period of our lives, dreams are known to be shorter than for adults, and include 40% nightmares. Who has never had a childhood nightmare?

2. Animals

Just like us, animals, especially mammals, also dream. With a conscience, as Freud stated, they can think and dream.

3. German Origin

The word "dream" has Old German roots: "draugmus" means "illusion" or "apparition", which explains the imaginary concept of dreams.

4. The environment

Our environment when we sleep greatly influences our dreams. The sounds, or other nearby stimuli are integrated into our dreams. For example, if we have a neighbor who plays loud music, we might imagine that we are at a concert.

5. Remembering dreams

During sleep, we go through several phases. In order to remember what we dreamed at night, we have to wake up in the "REM" phase (Rapid Eye Movement). In neurology, the REM stage refers to the deep sleep when we produce dreams, which can be recorded with an EEG. If we wake up during this phase, we have an 80% chance of remembering our dreams, but if we wake up during another phase, we have no more than a 20% chance.

6. 6 years of your life are spent dreaming

7. Sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis occurs when we wake up, when we recognize our environment, but we are completely unable to move, and it can last up to 1 minute sometimes! Do not panic, if this has happened to you, you’re among approximately 40% of the population who experience this phenomenon.

8. We dream even without visual stimuli

Despite the lack of visual stimuli, even the blind/visually impaired dream as fetuses. Those who have lost sight during life may even dream with images. For people who were born blind, they often dream of sensations, smells, and sounds, and the other 4 stimuli become more developed.

9. A transcript of human anxiety

When our dreams take us to fantasies such as flying, falling, being humiliated in public (who has never dreamed of finding themselves naked in front of everyone?), etc. This comes from human anxiety.

10. Men’s and women’s dreams

Men’s dreams predominantly have other men characters, at a rate of 70%. Women are more likely to have gender equality by dreaming as much about men as dreaming about women.

11. Characters in dreams are significant

The characters in our dreams may have faces that we know (like those of our friends, family, etc.) but our dreams may also have characters we don’t always recognize, but we have at least seen them once in our lives. When we do not know who the person we dream about, it’s because it’s among the hundreds of faces we encounter every day.

12. Dreams inspire

William Shakespeare reportedly used his own dreams to fuel the stories of his works’ characters. So dreams can inspire us!

13. A fetus dreams

We start dreaming very early. Yes, even in our mother’s womb, we were dreaming! However, with the lack of visual stimuli, a fetus’s dreams consist mainly of sensations. This explains how some people remember this time in their lives, but in a very abstract way!

14. Television influences the colors

We don’t know it, but we dream in color because we grew up with color TV. People who grew up with black-and-white TV tend to have dreams in black & white.

15. Children and dreams

We only begin to appear in our own dreams at the age of 3-4 years.