Everyone dreams, whether you remember it or not. 95% of dreams are long gone from your memory by the time you get out of bed. Dreams have intrigued scientists for many years, and we still don’t know much about them except for fun facts, theories, and speculations. To be exact, scientists do not have a solid answer for why we dream yet.
Not everyone dreams in color! About 12% of the population dream in black and white, presumably due to childhood exposure to black-and-white TVs. Dreams are mostly visual without much sound. Even blind people can dream in visuals, but they have not seen anything before, so their visuals are more likely to be blobs of colors and flashes of movement.
Ever wonder why your dreams have the weirdest and most nonsensical plot ever to have been created in the history of mankind? It’s because your vivid dreams appear in the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, which also happens to be when the prefrontal cortex (the logic center of the brain) is not very active. This also explains why something illogical in real life seems normal in a dream. Thankfully, the voluntary muscles are paralyzed in the REM stage to prevent foolish actions that the body could perform because of the dream. The good news is, people forget about 95-99% of their dreams. A reality where someone could remember decent chunks of their in-sleep hallucinations would be extremely confusing and disorienting.
Additionally, there are many similarities in dreams among the general population. People usually have several dreams per night, each lasting from five to 20 minutes. Negative dreams are more commonly experienced than positive ones; anxiety is probably the most common emotion found in dreams. Plus, there are many themes that most of the population will dream about, such as being chased or attacked, falling or flying, feeling frozen or paralyzed, arriving late, and being naked in public.
At the end of the day, scientists have not reached many conclusive theories about dreams. There is much to learn and discover, and hopefully, scientists will be able to decipher and explain what humans have not been able to figure out since the rise of humankind.
