Five minutes after the end of the dream, half the content is forgotten. After ten minutes, 90% is lost. During REM sleep, the flow of blood to the brain increases causing both the penis and the clitoris in women become erect.
Every human dreams, around 3 to 7 dreams a night. We dream around 2 to 3 hours in a whole night. The average human spends six years of his or her life dreaming. About 80% of neonatal and newborn sleep time is REM sleep, suggesting a tremendous amount of time dreaming.
Children tend to have shorter dreams than adults and as many as 40 percent of them are nightmares. Scientists believe this is because dreams act as a coping mechanism. Psychologist Carl Jung describes this as a therapeutic mechanism that helps resolve emotional conflicts in adults.
Aside from those who experience certain kinds of injury, it’s a biological fact that everyone dreams. However, not everyone remembers his or her dreams. Normally if you don't record the dream immediately after waking you will forget it.
The psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, used the concept of archetype in his theory of the human psyche. He believed that universal, mythic characters—archetypes—reside within the collective unconscious of people the world over. 'Archetypal images' are the symbols through which instinctive tendencies show themselves in dreams.
Being naked in a dream suggests exposure of self to others, vulnerability, or feeling ashamed. Alternatively, it can also represent a desire for freedom or being unencumbered.
One of the most infamous precognitive dreams in history was President Lincoln's in 1865. The president envisioned his own demise just a few days before he was assassinated in Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865.
When deprived of dreams, individuals become irritable and disoriented, hallucinate, and show signs of psychosis. They will also dream excessively when they do sleep.
Lucid dreaming occurs when there is a state of partial or complete awareness during the dream state. Researchers have begun to explore the possibility of using lucid dreaming for the treatment of nightmares and other therapeutic purposes.
Night terrors, or parasomnia, are not the same as nightmares. They are episodes of extreme panic that occur in early sleep and affect from 1%-4% of children between the ages of four and 12.
Dreams during REM sleep tend to be more bizarre and detailed and have a story line. Dreams in stages 1 and 2 of sleep are simpler and shorter. Deep-sleep dreams tend to be diffused and may be about nothing more than a color or emotion.
Various famous authors attribute their classics to dreams. For example, Mary Shelly claimed inspiration for Frankenstein came directly from her nightmares and Robert Lewis Stevenson accredited his classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the same.
When dreaming, an emphasis upon the right side of the body often refers to aspects of conscious life, while the left side represents the unconscious.