15 Interesting Psychological facts about dreams: The topic of dreaming and dreams has for thousands of years fascinated philosophers and scientists, and not only them. We all tend to think about our dreams, try to figure out if they mean anything, and share with others our interesting dreams. Here are 15 interesting psychological facts about dreams: 

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1. We all dream every time we sleep: You may question this saying that you rarely dream; you may think sometimes months pass without you dreaming. In fact, we all dream every single night (or, more accurately, whenever we sleep) and up to 2 hours per night. Researchers have found that people usually have several dreams each night, each one typically lasting between 5 and 20 minutes. During a lifetime, one person spends an average of six years dreaming. It just happens that we forget most of our dreams so we are unaware of the fact that we dream a lot. 

2. We forget the majority of our dreams: Forgetting is the reason we think we don’t dream every time we sleep. People usually forget up to 90 percent of everything they dream, including 50 percent within the first 5 minutes of waking up. Up to 60 percent of people do not remember their dreams at all. It seems that it’s simply not easy to hold on to the content of our dreams. One of the reasons why may be that, while in the dreaming phase of sleep, parts of the brain in charge of memory are relatively inactive, which sometimes prevents us from remembering what we have dreamed. 

3. Men and women dream differently: There are many differences between men and women, one of them being dreams. In general, almost equal amounts of both men and women appear in women’s dreams. However, around 70% of the people in men’s dreams are other men. In addition, men’s dreams tend to have more aggressive content than women’s do. For example, men reported dreaming about weapons significantly more often than women did. On the other hand, women tend to have some what longer dreams that feature more characters than men do. 

4. The brain is more active during sleep then when we are awake: Most of us associate sleeping and dreaming with rest, peace, and inactivity. Although this usually is true for our bodies, it appears that it is not true for our brains. Research shows that brain activity is greater when we are dreaming than when we are awake. This happens because our brains are processing all the information from our waking hours and making sense of everything we experienced when we were awake. Our brains are even more active during sleep when we experienced something new while awake, which supports the theory of processing information during sleep and dreaming. 

5. Dreams can help us process emotions: One of the explanations of the nature of dreams argues that, in dreams, we can process the emotions we experience when awake. One of the functions of dreaming is to help us process and cope with our emotions in the safe space of dreamland. Part of the brain in charge of regulating emotions, the amygdala, appears to be very active during vivid dreams. Dreams could also function as a form of psychotherapy, allowing the dreamer to relive past experiences without real-life risks, process emotions(especially negative ones), and cope with the troubles of waking life. 

6. You can control your dreams: Have you ever had a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming and could even make some decisions and alter the content of the dream? If you did, then you have experienced what is called ‘lucid dreaming’. Lucid dreaming is a kind of combination state of both consciousness and the dreaming stage of sleep. In this state, you can often direct or control what happens in your dream. Some people claim that one can learn how to experience lucid dreams, and many sources on the internet offer instructions. These methods have not been scientifically proven, although there has been some proof of the influence of some substances on promoting lucid dreaming. 

7. You can experience frightening sleep paralysis: Unlike the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, which can be pleasant, there is something less enjoyable called ‘sleep paralysis’. Sleep paralysis is a state in which you are awake but temporarily paralyzed, unable to move or speak. It can last from a few seconds to a few minutes,and it can be very scary. It usually happens while transitioning from sleep to wakefulness. Normal sleep involves muscle inactivity because it helps prevent acting out our dreams and hurting ourselves. Under normal circumstances, that state of immobility ends upon waking up, so a person rarely becomes conscious of it. But, sometimes a person can become aware of their paralysis while waking up and even experience awful hallucinations of someone being in the room. 

8. Dreams can incorporate what we actually experience while dreaming: Sometimes, we dream about what is happening to us while we are dreaming. Did it ever happen to you that you dream about drinking water only to wake up and find that you actually are very thirsty? If it did, you know what we are talking about. We can also incorporate external sensations, like sounds or smells. It appears that we are not completely cut off from the real word while sleeping. What is happening around us and inside us while we are asleep can actually change the content of our dreams. These sensations are often not strong enough to wake us up (as the alarm clock is, for example), but they are noticeable enough for us to include them in the dreaming process and to change the course of our dreams. 

9. Dreams can help in sorting out and retaining memories: Similar to processing emotions, while dreaming, we sort out memories of what happened to us while we were awake. We relive parts of our daily experience and sort out what is important to keep and what is irrelevant that should be forgotten. This process also aids our memory because it helps us empty it of unimportant content and make room for what is crucial to be memorized. Some studies show that there is improvement in learning complex skills in people who dreamed about doing them. 

10. Dreaming helps us solve problems: When you had trouble solving a certain problem, maybe someone gave you advice to “sleep on it”. Research shows that there is some science behind that advice. Sleep is crucial for brain activity, but dreaming also aids creativity, which is important when searching for a solution to a complex problem. Evidence shows that the REM stage of sleep helps organize and link together in novel ways the facts we know and the things we experience, which helps find solutions to problems. So, the next time you have a problem that requires divergent thinking, really try sleeping on it – it may be crucial for solving it. 

11. We can only dream about faces we have seen in reality: Our brains can’t invent new faces. This means that any face we see in our dreams is one we have seen somewhere before. This doesn’t mean that you personally know that person, only that you have seen them before, although you probably didn’t notice them or consider them important. These faces could be from the newspaper or someone we passed by on the way to work. We didn’t remember them because they were not important to us, but they came up in our dreams. So, that serial killer that chased you in your nightmare or that cute guy you dated in you last dream – those are all people you have seen somewhere in your waking life. 

12. Dreams could be by products of our mental activity during sleep: When we dream, excessive electrical activity is created in some areas of our brain. These areas are in charge of processing emotions, sensations, and other events. One of the explanations of dreaming is that dreams are our interpretation of this electrical activity. That may be why we rarely dream about something we have never heard of, seen, or experienced before. Dreams are not creative in a way that their content is something entirely new to us. Rather, dreams are the way we interpret mental activity that occurs during sleep. This is one of the explanations of the nature of dreams. 

13. Animals could be dreaming too: If you have a pet, maybe you have seen them twitch their limbs or even growl or purr when sleeping. They seem like they are dreaming, don’t they? Until the development of various brain activity scanners, animal lovers could only speculate if their furry friends were actually dreaming. Monitoring animals’ brain activity during sleep brought us closer to conclusive answers. Animals’ brains show almost identical brain activity while sleeping as humans while dreaming. This means that human’s and animals’ brains show similar brain waves while sleeping and could be definitive proof that animals experience dreaming too.