About Your Dreams

Our brains work in mysterious and fascinating ways. From regulating our responses to external stimuli to creating the complex subconscious, our minds can give us significant insight into our lifestyles, deepest thoughts, and sleep patterns.

In an exclusive look below, we’ll go through some of the most intriguing ways your brain interprets totally random things in your life, and see how these things may affect your dreams.

Similar to the interesting facts that may be causing our weird sleeping habits, the factors outlined below may be a little surprising and definitely a little odd.

1. Going to Sleep Hungry
2. Unexpected Sounds
3. Vitamin B6 Supplements
4. Sudden Smells
5. Distinct Sleeping Position
6. Growing up with B & W Television
7. Repreased Fears
8. Closely Shared Genes
9. The Earth's Magnetic Fields
10. Different kinds of cheese

Therefore, it is not surprising to be told that no one is sure why we dream. 

During the past century, however, scientists have made significant progress in understanding the factors that influence sleep and dreaming. 

Evidently, our nights are influenced by what we're doing during the day. 

We spend our days gathering information, some of it we would like to keep, most of it we need to discard. 

If we do not clear out our mental storage space regularly we risk saturating our brain with too much useless trivia.

Overall, recent studies suggest that we require a balance of both phases of sleep, SWS and REM, in order to consolidate memories for future use.

The content of our dreams is influenced by our age and gender.

Females often report seeing lots of bright colors; sometimes they report seeing colors that actually glitter or glow, usually during the peak of menstruation.

Females usually report that they know the identity of their sexual partners in dreams and they report seeing the face and hands of their partners.

In contrast, males rarely report seeing colors and if they are present, the colors are washed-out pastels.

Males rarely report knowing the identity of their sexual partners in dreams and do not report actually looking at the face of their partners even if they believe they are familiar.

Our dreams emphasize visual perception and emotions at the expense of reason. 

Although our dreams feel as though they are agent driven, our dreams are not volitional nor do they contain the self-reflection, insight, judgment or abstract thought that constitute consciousness.