When the alarm rings, I turn it off to lie down a little longer. But why, when I only dream of a short conversation or a walk, do I wake up and realize that an hour has passed? How could these events stretch for such a long time? Is that so for everyone?
Scientists can now answer this question by testing those who can control their sleep. Considering the experiences of these people leads to interesting discoveries, such as, for example, the ability to tickle yourself in your sleep.
The ability to control oneself during sleep has been studied for over a hundred years. One of the earliest studies of sleep was conducted in the nineteenth century by the Frenchman Marcus d'Hervy de Saint-Denis, who discovered that he was able to control his sleep from the age of thirteen. He spent several decades studying the activity of the brain during sleep, when a person is able to direct his own dreams.
In his dreams, for example, he threw himself from the roof of a multi-storey building to see if he would dream of his own death. But he could not see the next dream until the previous nightmare was over. Noticing that the places and people in his dreams were familiar to him, he suggested that dreams consist of snatches of our memories, and this is a fairly rational explanation of dreams.
A recent study by Jennifer Windt of the University of Güttemberg Mainz in Germany shows that the essential difference between sleep and wakefulness lies precisely in the ability to control oneself. During wakefulness, the brain controls human behavior. In a dream, on the contrary, a person does not know what to expect, and the situation does not depend on his actions.
Windt also asked subjects to invite the heroes of their dreams to tickle them. "And they refused several times," says Windt: "This means that the heroes of our dreams, that is, the people we dream about, have their own opinions and intentions."
Daniel Erlacher from the University of Bern in Switzerland has proved that when a person dreams of any kind of movement, the same parts of the brain are activated that are responsible for body movements in a vigorous state.
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He also managed to find out that during sleep a person spends much more time on performing normal activities. Now it is clear why a short dream actually stretches for an hour.