Amazing Facts of Life: Part VIII- Dreams

I would like to share few very very amazing facts about dreams which might be concealed from everyone. You might be spellbound to see that human psychology is so vivid in nature.

Fact 1 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.

Fact 2 Within 5 minutes of waking, half of the dream is forgotten. Within 10, 90% is forgotten.

Fact 3 Dreaming prevents pychosis in students. Students who were awakened at the beginning of each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep experienced difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days.

Fact 4 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.*

Fact 5 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.*

Fact6 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.”*

Fact 7 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.*

Fact 8 Our body is virtually paralyzed during our sleep to prevent our body from acting out what we see in our dreams. During dreaming, our 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.

(*--these facts have been copied and pasted to retain the beauty of language visualization)

Reference Link

http://listverse.com/science/top-10-amazing-facts-about-dreams/