So what is sleep, from the point of view of physiology, and what is the direct interest of the dreaming process? On World Sleep Day, which this year was celebrated in the world on March 17, we present the top 20 of the most little-known facts about dreams.
1. How long do we sleep?
Sad but true. The average person spends a third of their life sleeping. As you know, during a properly flowing sleep, the body restores the energy spent on daytime activity and "puts itself in order." That is why a healthy person wakes up feeling refreshed and energized. Well at best!
2. Dreaming against psychosis
Dreams are an excellent remedy for psychosis. In one study, participants were prevented from dreaming, although they were allowed to sleep for at least 8 hours a night. After three days, all participants in the experiment began to experience difficulty concentrating, irritability, hallucinations and the first signs of psychosis. When the subjects were given the opportunity to dream, all signs of incipient psychosis disappeared, and the subjects themselves began to see more dreams than usual.
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3. What lies behind dreams?
The most mysterious, exciting and interesting experiences in life we get when we sleep and dream. When we fall asleep, our will loses control over thoughts, a completely special type of thinking arises. It is thanks to him that we are able to observe fantastic images, distorted and unrelated plot scenes, where time does not flow in the same way as in real life. And this is great!
4. We remember only 10% of our dreams
You know that during the first five minutes after waking up we have a real chance to "grab by the tail" about half of the dream plot, but after ten minutes 90% of the content, alas, will be lost, and the meaning of the dream crumbles like a house of cards.
5. Not dreaming is impossible
Many claim that they never dream. But the complete absence of dreams is a manifestation of some severe mental illness. All normal people, falling asleep, see dreams, but the majority, upon waking, instantly forget them. This is confirmed by encephalograms taken during sleep. In the entire history of only one patient in a military hospital in Israel, such an examination did not show the "presence" of dreams. The man had been shot in the head before.
6. Even the blind have dreams
It has been proven that people who have lost their eyesight during their lifetime see dreams on a par with sighted people. People who are blind from birth do not see images in our usual sense, but in the same way they experience various emotions in dreams: images in their subconscious are formed through smells, sounds and tactile sensations.
7. In a dream, we see only real people
It is noteworthy that our subconscious mind is unable to independently and arbitrarily generate people's faces. This means that we have seen absolutely all strangers in our dreams, but perhaps we did not remember. During our life, under different circumstances, millions of faces pass us by, which means that our brain will never experience a deficit in new actors for the most unexpected roles in the scenarios of our dreams.
8. Not everyone can see colored dreams
Unpleasant, but true! About 12% of sighted people see exclusively monochrome dreams. More precisely, it was so until the mid-sixties. Later, the share of people who dream exclusively in black and white fell by 4.4% of the total sample of the study. Interestingly, many sleep researchers suggest this trend is due to the ubiquity of color television broadcasting.
Screensaver of the program “ Good night, kids. ”
9. Dreams are symbolic
You have probably heard the anecdote about Sigmund Freud and his niece: "Sometimes a banana is just a banana." However, seriously, dreams cannot be interpreted straightforwardly and unambiguously, since any image in a dream can be a symbol of another object. Through a dream, our subconscious mind addresses us in the language of metaphors and symbols. Some of them have a globally unambiguous interpretation on all continents, others contain signs that are understandable only to us.
10. Games of the subconscious
Psychoanalysts have long drawn attention to the fact that dreams are a way of solving some psychological problems. A person in unrealistic conditions "plays" critical situations and finds a way out of them that suits him and does not injure his psyche. And, even if in real life he sometimes has to come to terms with another decision, he gives vent to emotions in a dream. Perhaps this is why men are much more aggressive in their dreams than in life, and women are more sexy.
11. A startling fact
It is known that the natives of the island of Bali, when suddenly frightened, fall asleep, as is characteristic of some insects.
12. Dreams-sadness
No matter how sad it may sound, the most common emotions experienced in a dream are melancholy, anxiety or despair, and, in general, negative emotions in dreams prevail over positive ones.
13. Number of dreams
Everyone is familiar with the expression: "To see the seventh dream." It turns out that during the night we are really able to see from four to seven dreams. On average, dreams take two hours a night.
14. Lucid dreaming
Most of the pictures in your dream are unique to one particular case. Scientists know this because some people have the ability to see their dreams as observers without waking up. This state of consciousness is called lucid dreaming, which is a big mystery.
15. Animals also dream
As studies carried out on different groups of animals prove, very many of them experience similar modes of nervous activity in their sleep. The mental impulses of highly developed animals during sleep practically do not differ from human ones in drawing, from which one can make a confident conclusion that animals also see dreams. Moreover, many of them experience what they see no less emotionally than in reality.
Animals also dream.
16. Paralysis of the body during sleep
Sleep scientists identify two key sleep phases - deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. REM is a completely normal sleep state that takes up 20 to 25% of the total sleep time. It is in the phase of REM sleep that a person sees dreams. To exclude involuntary physical movements of the body, the subconscious mind literally paralyzes it during the REM phase of sleep, but for unknown reasons this mechanism often fails.
17. Women and men dream differently
As you know, representatives of the weak and strong half of humanity see dreams in different ways. In two cases out of three, a man communicates in a dream, fights or establishes a relationship with a man. There is no such bias in the dreams of women, and they see approximately the same number of women and men.
18. Smoker's dream
People who quit smoking are said to have much more vivid dreams than smokers or those who have never smoked.
19. Sleep - prediction
According to the research results, from 18% to 38% of respondents had a dream prediction at least once in their life, and 70% of citizens experienced déjà vu. Belief in the very possibility of prophetic sleep is widespread almost everywhere - from 63 to 98% of respondents in different countries of the world.
20. Woe from Wit
The story goes that some historical figures were only able to sleep 3-4 hours a day. Edison, Da Vinci, Franklin, Tesla, Churchill - they all slept much less than the recognized norm and felt quite healthy. However, scientists argue that such sleep disturbances are the flip side of great talent or genius, which is not always good.
World Sleep Day was first held on March 14, 2008, and has since been held annually on Friday, the second full week of March, as part of the World Health Organization (WHO) Sleep and Health Project. Each year, activities within the day are dedicated to a specific theme. On World Sleep Day, public service announcements are intensified, conferences and symposia are held to raise awareness of the importance of sleep, sleep problems and the impact of sleep disorders on human health and society at large.