Top 5 Weird Facts About Dreams

From finding yourself naked in school to being chased off a cliff by a swarm of bees... dreams can be tough to comprehend. Luckily, we’re here to help. Welcome to MsMojo’s Top 5 Facts. In this installment, we’re counting down the Top 5 Facts About Dreams.

While the vast majority of people dream in color, there is a small percentage, roughly 12% of the population, that dreams exclusively in black and white. Like a family in the early 50s unwilling to shell out for a color TV, dream world looks like an episode of “The Twilight Zone” for these folks. Why? Unfortunately the jury has yet to reach a verdict on this one. But according to a recently revisited 1942 study, before color TV became standard, dreaming in black and white was significantly more common, if not the norm. But does it matter? That nightmare of a giant snake chasing you through your elementary school isn’t going to be any less scary in black and white.

The basic explanation for this one is that reading and telling time require a certain level of focus from your brain. When you are looking at a clock or reading a book your mind directs its singular attention to the process. This is extremely difficult to accomplish when dreaming, although a small number of people claim to be capable. Advancements in lucid dreaming have allowed us to gain a better understanding of what can and cannot be done while in a dormant state, but according to dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley, “taking charge of the content of your dreams isn’t a skill everyone has.” This fact might make the plot of “Inception” seem even more far-fetched… but no less entertaining.

On an average night, people experience multiple dreams. While we tend to forget most of them almost immediately, you may remember seeing a familiar face or two. It can be extremely difficult to recognize the faces of the other people in our dreams, but one thing is certain: you’ve actually seen them all before. It may have been at the grocery store six years ago or at the dog park yesterday, but you’ve definitely seen them before. That’s because your brain isn’t able to create new faces while you sleep. So it draws upon the near never-ending face-index that it’s been adding to since your birth. That zombie chasing you around the space station… may very well be your aunt Agnes.

You’ve likely heard the expression “men are from Mars and women are from Venus”. This is at least partially true when it comes to our dreams. You see, when men dream, roughly 70% of the individuals they encounter are other men. Women on the other hand, tend to dream of both sexes equally. This may provide insight into why the dreams of men are generally of a more aggressive nature than those of their female counterparts. Ultimately the gendered differences in dreaming stop exactly where you’d expect: sex. That’s right, when it comes to dreams of a sexual nature... men and women experience them with equal regularity.

For many of us, dreaming often involves absurdly impossible scenarios. We tend to ignore the majority of our night time adventures, occasionally mentioning them to a close friend or family member. Now imagine if some of history’s preeminent inventors had done the same. From Google to “The Terminator,” Beatles songs to the sewing machine, some of the world’s most important ideas came to their creators while sleeping. Some dreams, like Niels Bohr’s vision for the structure of the atom and Einstein’s theory of relativity, quite literally changed the world for future generations. So the next time you think of something absolutely bonkers while taking a nap, write it down…you may just be onto something brilliant.

Do you dream in color or black and white? Do you think one of your dreams could ever lead to an amazing invention? For more awe-inspiring Top 10’s and incredible Top 5’s, be sure to subscribe to MsMojo.