What is a DREAM!!!!

DREAMS are a succession of images, thoughts, sounds, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep and its study is called oneirology.

During a typical lifespan, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming. Most dreams last only 5 to 20 minutes.

Observation shows that dreams are strongly associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, during which an electroencephalogram shows brain activity to be most like wakefulness.


Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterised by the rapid movement of the eyes.

REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20–25% of total sleep, about 90–120 minutes of a night's sleep. During a normal night of sleep, humans usually experience about four or five periods of REM sleep; they are quite short at the beginning of the night and longer toward the end. Many animals and some people tend to wake, or experience a period of very light sleep, for a short time immediately after a bout of REM. The relative amount of REM sleep varies considerably with age. A newborn baby spends more than 80% of total sleep time in REM.

During REM, the activity of the brain's neurons is quite similar to that during waking hours; for this reason, the sleep stage may be called paradoxical sleep. This means that there are no dominating brain waves during REM sleep.

REM sleep episodes and the dreams that accompany them lengthen progressively across the night, with the first episode being shortest, of approximately 10–12 minutes duration, and the second and third episodes increasing to 15–20 minutes. Dreams at the end of the night may last as long as 15 minutes, although these may be experienced as several distinct stories due to momentary arousals interrupting sleep as the night ends.

The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Other emotions include pain, abandonment, fear, joy, etc. Negative emotions are much more common than positive ones.

Common reported themes in dreams include: situations relating to school (adolescents), being chased or attacked, running slowly in place, falling, arriving too late, a person alive in reality dead in the dream, a person who is dead in real life alive in the dream, teeth falling out, flying, future events such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc. (with different scenarios), past events in your life (with different scenarios) embarrassing moments, falling in love with random people, failing an examination, not being able to move or focus vision, car accidents, being accused of a crime you didn't commit, suddenly finding yourself naked, wanting to go to the toilet (usually occurs when you need to in reality), losing your car, not knowing where you are and many more...

From Wiki - By ViKI