• Question: do we dream every night? even if we don't remember all of them?

    Asked by xxbecciexx to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Yes several times a night. When someone is asleep and their eyes are moving under the lids they are dreaming.

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hi Beccie, we might dream every night, even when we forget the dream after. Most dreams occur in a phase of sleep called rapid eye movement sleep. This takes up about 20% of our sleep cycle. We may dream at other times but this has been what the evidence shows so far.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hello! Good question! Scientists have tried to understand dreams for a long time and what is known is that:

      1) the average dream can last a few minutes or up to 20 minutes
      2) we can have many dreams per night but we usually only remember one or two
      3) people can dream in colour and also in black and white!

      We don’t remember all our dreams because the memory system is the brain is in a state of relaxation during sleep – it is not active like when we are awake.

    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hey Beccie
      Thank you for the question. We tend to dream for about 2 hours a night and the less time between dreaming and waking up the more likely we are to remember them. Unfortunately I dont think scientists have figured out why we dream or why we dont rember them all yet.

    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I’m not sure about every night, but we probably do forget a lot of our dreams. some people (such as my wife) seem to dream all the time, whilst others (like me) don’t – or maybe I’m just rubbish at rememebring my dreams?? My wife puts my lack of dreaming down to my lack of creativity and imagination 🙁

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