Adults and babies alike dream for around two hours per night—even those of us who claim not to. Researchers have found that people usually have several dreams each night, each one typically lasting for between five to 20 minutes.

Everybody Dreams

According to one theory about why dreams so difficult to remember, the changes in the brain that occur during sleep do not support the information processing and storage needed for memory formation to take place.

You Forget Most of Your Dreams

While most people report dreaming in color, there is a small percentage of people who 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, soft pastel colors are those most frequently chosen.

Not All Dreams Are in Color

Many think that when a sleeping dog wags its tail or moves its legs, it is dreaming. While it's hard to say for sure whether this is truly the case, researchers believe that <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150905-animals-sleep-science-dreaming-cats-brains/">it's likely that animals do indeed dream</a>. 
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Animals Probably Dream

A lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming even though you're still asleep. Lucid dreaming is thought to be a combination state of both consciousness and REM sleep, during which you can often direct or control the dream content.

It's Possible to Control Your Dreams

In <a href="http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2276048">one study</a> of people who have been blind since birth, researchers found that they still seemed to experience visual imagery in their dreams, and they also had eye movements that correlated to visual dream recall.

Blind People May Dream Visually

The most common emotion experienced in dreams are anxiety, and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810008001268?via%3Dihub">negative emotions</a>, and in general, are much more common than positive ones.

Negative Emotions Are More Common

While dreams are often heavily influenced by our personal experiences, researchers have found that certain dream themes are very common across different cultures. For example, people from all over the world frequently dream about being chased, being attacked, or falling. Other <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-do-people-dream-about-2795926">common dream experiences</a> include feeling frozen and unable to move, arriving late, flying, and being naked in public.

Many Dreams Are Universal

<ul><li>In several <a href="https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/article/viewFile/10954/pdf_52">studies</a>, men reported dreaming about weapons significantly more often than women did, while women dreamed about references to clothing more often than men.</li><li>Another study showed that men's dreams tend to have more aggressive content and physical activity, while women's dreams contain more rejection and exclusion, as well as more conversation than physical activity.</li><li>Women tend to have slightly longer dreams that feature more characters.</li></ul>

Men and Women Dream Differently  

REM sleep is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary muscles. The phenomenon is known as REM atonia and prevents you from acting out your dreams while you're asleep. Basically, because motor neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move.
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In some cases, this paralysis can even carry over into the waking state for as long as 10 minutes, a condition known as sleep paralysis.</div></div>

You Are Paralyzed During Your Dreams

Dreams can be fascinating, exciting, terrifying, or just plain weird. While there is no clear consensus on why we dream, researchers have learned quite a bit about what happens while we are dreaming. Here are 10 things you should know about dreams. Adults and babies alike dream for around two hours per night -even those of us who claim not to.