 You may have spent some time thinking about your dreams, like what is the meaning of your dreams? Why do you even dream? While there is no clear consensus on why we dream, researchers have learned quite a bit about what happens while we are dreaming. In this video, I will share with you 13 psychological facts about dreams. 1. Everybody dreams A lot of individuals claim that date on dream, but the fact is that everyone, adults and babies alike, dream for around two hours per night. Researchers have found that people usually have several dreams each night. Each one typically lasts in 4 between 5 to 20 minutes. During a typical lifetime, people spend an average of 6 years dreaming. Every human being dreams except in cases of extreme psychological disorders. If you think you are not dreaming, it's not true. You probably forget your dreams. 2. Body paralysis Rem sleep is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary muscles. It is a temporary inability to move that occurs right after falling asleep or waking up. This phenomenon is identified by a brief loss of muscle control known as atonia and prevents you from acting out your dreams while you are asleep. It is categorized as a type of parisomnia, abnormal behavior during sleep. According to researchers, sleep paralysis involves a mixed state of consciousness that blends both wakefulness and REM sleep because motor neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move. While sleep paralysis can be expected, an estimated 75% of sleep paralysis episodes involve hallucinations that are distinct from typical dreams. 3. Precognitive Precognition, which is also called future sight, refers to the perception that involves the gaining of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and usually acquired sense-based knowledge. Various studies that were carried out across large population sets revealed that between 18-38% of people had experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have experienced déjà vu. The percentage of persons that believe precognitive dreaming is possible is even higher, ranging from 63% to 98%. 4. Men and Women Dream Differently, researchers have found some differences between men and women when it comes to the contents of their dreams. In several studies, men reported dreaming about weapons significantly more often than women did. While women dreamed about references to clothing more often than men, another study showed that men's dreams tend to have more aggressive content and physical activity. In contrast, women's dreams contain more rejection and exclusion, as well as more conversation than physical exercise. Women tend to have slightly longer dreams that feature more characters. When it appears, when it comes to the characters that typically appear in dreams, men dream about other men twice as often as they do about women, while women tend to dream about both sexes equally. 5. You Forget 95% of Your Dreams Studies show that within 5 minutes of a dream end, we forget 50% of its content and 90% of our dream's detail is lost only 10 minutes later and as much as 95% of all dreams are forgotten. According to one theory about why dreams are so difficult to remember is that the changes in the brain that occur during sleep do not support the information processing and storage needed for memory formation to take place. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, also stated that the function of dreams is to weed out unneeded memory connections that accumulate over time in the brain and dream recall defeats this primary evolutionary goal of dreaming. Crick concluded that we forget dreams because remembering dreams can leave the brain cluttered with useless information. 6. Not All Dreams Are in Color While most people report dreaming in color, a small percentage of people claim to only dream in black and white. In studies where dreamers have been awakened and asked to select colors from a chart that match those in their dreams, self-pastel colors are the most frequently chosen. Over time, researchers have tried to understand the reason why some dreams are in color while others are in black and white. Some researchers suggest that dreaming in black and white is down to creativity. The more creative you are, the more vivid the colors and crazy adventures you have while you sleep. While for others, it is not because the dreams are actually in black and white, but individuals remember their dreams as black and white because the vivid details from the night before fade throughout the day. Whatever the case may be, there is no right or wrong way to dream. 7. Reality Incorporates Into Dreams Our minds interpret the external stimuli that our senses are bombarded with when we are asleep and make them a part of our dreams. This means that sometimes in our dreams we can hear a sound from reality and incorporate it in any way. For example, you may be dreaming that you are in a concert while your brother is playing the guitar during your sleep. 8. Blind People Also Have Visual Dreams Have you ever had to wonder whether individuals who are blind, especially those born blind, have dreams? Well, you don't have to wonder anymore. A study of people who have been blind since birth, researchers found that they still seem to experience visual imagery in their dreams. They also had eye movements that correlated to visual dream memory. They have also found out that although their eye movements were fewer during REM sleep than the sighted participants of the study, the blind participants reported the same dream sensations, including visual content. 9. A Violent Dream May Be a Warning Sign A new study suggests that a rare sleep disorder in which people act out their dreams sometimes with violent trashes, cakes and screams may be an early sign of brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease and dementia. Individuals who reported having violent dreams was selected for a survey. Out of the 27, 13 patients developed what likely dementia and mild cognitive impairments were. 12 patients developed Parkinson's disease, one person Parkinson's dementia and one person multiple system atrophy. Past research has also suggested a link between dream inactive behaviors and specific neurodegenerative ailments. 10. You Can Control Your Dream Lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming, even though you are still asleep. Lucid dreaming is thought to be a combination state of both consciousness and rapid eye movement REM sleep, during which you can often direct or control the dream content. According to the research of a psychologist at Grant McEwen University in Canada, Dr. Jane Gackenberg said people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams, where they view themselves from outside their bodies. They are also better able to influence their dream world, as if controlling a video game character. In the words of Dr. Gackenberg, gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams. 11. Dreams Can Help You Solve Puzzles Have you ever experienced being stressed over a problem that you can't solve and just decided to go to sleep? According to the theory of a Harvard psychologist, Deirdre Barrett, sleeping hours may help us solve puzzles that have plagued us during daylight hours. According to Barrett, it's the visual and often illogical aspects of dreams that make them perfect for out-of-the-box thinking, which is necessary to solve problems. When we are bothered so much by an issue, we're still working on the same problems whatever the state we're put in. Hence, Deirdre Barrett concludes that while dreams may have initially evolved for another purpose, they have likely been refined over time for multiple tasks, including helping the brain reboot and helping us solve problems. 12. Negative Emotions Are More Common In Dreams Dream content studies have revealed that dream experiences are negatively biased. Humphill dream contents are more frequent than corresponding positive dream contents. The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety, and negative emotions are generally more common than positive ones, even when we feel more positive in our waking lives. According to the evolutionary theory of dreams, the reason for the negative emotions is because our dreams are designed to teach us how to deal with difficult, dangerous situations. Dreams teach us what to do if dangerous creatures are threatening us or if we have to fight to survive. Interestingly, the negative emotions that you experience in your dreams can reflect the feelings you have in waking life. 13. Dreams Can Be Universal Have you ever dreamed about being chased, losing a loved one, or failing an examination? Well, you are not the only one who has had such dreams. Although dreams are often heavily influenced by our personal experiences, researchers have found that specific dream themes are prevalent across different cultures. For example, people worldwide frequently dream about being attacked, being chased, or falling. Other everyday dream experiences include feeling frozen and unable to move, arriving late, lying and being naked in public. Legends have it that these same dreams have existed before the beginning of recorded literature and they will occur tonight and every other night in every country around the world. According to some psychologists, dreams are an interesting subject to study and getting a better handle of the nature of dreams can boost self-knowledge and aid personal growth.