Since the dawn of time, dreams have been an enigmatic subject for humans, curiosities about dreams were present, for many years there were doubts about reality or other scenes that happened in our sleep. have been explained as magical or mystical events, always associated with a reality beyond our comprehension.
Greek mythology is quite eloquent about it. For the ancient Greeks, the god Chaos, who was the twin brother of Tunatos, or Death, had two sons, one was Nicte at night, and the other was Erebro, the darkness of hell. These two brothers had a son: Hypnos, the god of sleep, thus chaos and death gave rise to night and darkness, and from this original combination dreams are born.
“Happiness for me is good health, sleep without fear and wake up without anxiety. “- Francoise Sagan-
Hipnos had three children: Morpheus, Iquelo and Fantaso. Morpheus is the one who appears in human dreams. This takes the form of anyone. Therefore, each human figure who appeared in dreams was another personification of Morpheus, Iquelo also with animals, and Fantaso with inanimate objects. For the Greeks, human dreams were nothing more than a game of the gods.
These are not the only curiosities about the dreams that exist, it was first mythology and, later, science, which added or revealed fascinating data, the following 10 curiosities are among the most interesting.
The only thing we rest when we sleep is consciousness, far from resting our brain works intensely during sleep and dreams, even in the deepest phases, when slow waves occur, the activity does not stop for a second.
What happens is that in certain stages of sleep, certain regions of the brain work in a slower and more coordinated way, however, during the so-called REM phase there is a real increase in activity, so much so that if you do an EEG during this stage, we will find a pattern very similar to that found in an awake person.
Every time we sleep we end up dreaming, there’s no alternative. Those who say they don’t dream say it because they don’t remember what happened when they closed their eyes. When we’re already asleep, we can’t help but dream. Finally, we clarify one of the most common curiosities about dreams.
Research indicates that the properly described sleep stages appear in periods of 5 to 20 minutes, if we consider all these fractions of time and add them up, the result is a period of about 6 years of life in which we spend dreaming. life expectancy at the time was considered a benchmark.
Some studies have found subtle differences between the dreams of men and women, the contrast between them is mainly in relation to the content of the dreams, the scenes and characters vary from one genre to another.
Some studies have suggested that men dream more about scenarios and situations in which acts of aggression occur, while women instead dream more. In your dreams, the details are more intense and the situations more complex.
Another curiosity of the most common dreams is whether they are colored or black and white, according to the information of dreamers, it is estimated that eight out of 10 dreams are colored, everyone dreams in black and white. However, a small percentage of the population is never able to dream in color, or at least does not seem to remember it.
In one experiment, they asked a group to select the color scheme associated with sleep. This requirement was made immediately after they awoke. Almost all volunteers chose pastel colors. Therefore, we can conclude that there is a tendency to dream of pastel colors.
During the dreams we not only visualize scenes and characters, but also feel many emotions, as evidenced fully by Calvin Hall’s extensive research on dreamers, which managed to gather 50,000 stories related to dreams.
Unsurprisingly it helped us a lot while we slept, we experienced almost all emotions, which is surprising, however, is that the most mentioned emotion is anxiety, there is also a clear predominance of other negative emotions, such as fear and anger. , during dreams.
Experts on the subject have revealed that there are repeated dreams. The funny thing is that they appear the same way in very different cultures. That’s why we’re talking about “universal dreams,” or topics we’ve all dreamed of.
One of these universal dreams is that of persecution, almost everyone also dreamed of being attacked by someone or falling into an abyss, dreams of being harassed at school or being naked in front of a large number of people are also quite common.
According to a report published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, people who have smoked for a long time and quit smoking have brighter dreams than normal people, that is, more realistic and detailed.
In a survey of 243 people who quit smoking, 33% reported having had smoking-related dreams, which occurred between one and four weeks after withdrawal, and 97% said they had never dreamed of smoking before quitting smoking.
One fact already proven is that we never dream of unknown people, the brain does not invent faces. Those who appear in dreams are people we have already seen, even if possible.
As absurd as the characters that appear in the course of our dreams are, they are never unknown. The same goes for objects. Sometimes the utensils seem completely new, however, it is a decomposition or deconstruction of already known objects.
After some studies he found the phenomenon known as “dream incorporation”, one of the curiosities about the most surprising dreams, mentions that, in some cases, environmental issues end up integrating into dreams. They merge in some way, that could be interpreted as “coherent. “
This happens, for example, when the person dreams that they are in school, in a classroom, suddenly the alarm goes off and the dreamer associates this sound with the bell indicating the end of the lesson.
In this case, we are talking about the well-known and feared “sleep paralysis”. We refer to a physiological phenomenon that occurs every time we sleep, some glands secrete a sleep-inducing hormone and neurons send signals to the spinal cord. so that this organ relaxes. As sleep progresses, there is only relaxation, but paralysis.
This brain mechanism has a purpose. Could anybody start acting ?, sleeping at any moment. This would involve certain risks, under certain conditions, so the paralysis induced by this process ensures that the body remains at rest until the moment of awakening.
Science has not yet revealed all the riddles and curiosities about dreams, moreover, it has not even been able to clarify the exact reasons why we sleep and dream, we already know that it is not to rest, at least. The world of dreams remains an unknown realm, in which we enter and leave daily without fully understanding its uniqueness.