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I hope this isn’t true. I’m in my 50s and I have never dreamed. By that I mean, I have never woken up from sleeping and remembered anything happening between th

I hope this isn’t true. I’m in my 50s and I have never dreamed. By that I mean, I have never woken up from sleeping and remembered anything happening between the time I fell asleep and I awoke. It’s a complete blank. Maybe I do dream, but I have no proof or indication that I do. I never have. As a side note, it really bothers me when dreaming is used as a plot device in books. I can’t relate at all to the concept of dreaming and remembering the dream.

nomel 4y ago
There are devices made to detect and disturb you (with light, vibrations, etc) during REM sleep, to help with lucid dreaming. If you want to experience a dream, something like that might help, with the fairly safe assumption that you do enter REM sleep.
- jhot 4y ago
  I didn't realize this until I had kids and my sleep became constantly disturbed, but the only times I'm consciously aware of my dreams are when I'm awoken during the dream. If I am given the chance to have a peaceful night, then it's just an instantaneous time shift from falling asleep to awake with nothing in-between. So I could see how one of these types of devices could be handy to gently bring the consciousness out of deep sleep.
ThalesX 4y ago
Interestingly enough, I could be considered the opposite. Having aphantasia, I've never had a mental image, but I have very vivid dreams. Talking to my dad, he only dreams in black and white. It's just awesome the variability we humans have.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Childhood exposure to black-and-white television seems to be the common denominator. A study published this year, for example, found that people 25 and younger say they almost never dream in black and white. But people over 55 who grew up with little access to color television reported dreaming in black and white about a quarter of the time. Over all, 12 percent of people dream entirely in black and white. > Go back a half-century, and television’s impact on our closed-eye experiences becomes even clearer. In the 1940s, studies showed that three-quarters of Americans, including college students, reported “rarely” or “never” seeing any color in their dreams. Now, those numbers are reversed. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html
tracerbulletx 4y ago
People who go under anesthesia routinely have significant amounts of time where they are conscious and interacting with doctors, that are completely lost to memory. Everyone is configured uniquely, and you could just be someone whose memory is more shut off during sleep and still be "dreaming", if we just define dreaming as the brain continuing to operate on its model of the world in some capacity while sleeping.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Retrograde amnesia as in Versed/midazolam?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 4y ago
Don't worry about it. There are no such things as dreams; they're the brain bullshitting itself when you wake up in an inconsistent state. If you have a very complicated or imaginative life, your brain has to do a lot of work at night doing a very lossy compress of everything interesting that happened that day. If your sleep is restless or interrupted, you're more likely to still be in this process when you awake. Your mind can then attempt to rationalize how it reached this state [edit: filled with malformed images, associations and features that lack wholes.] If you have some combination of a life of habit and adequate rest, you'll less often fool yourself into thinking you dreamed. If you immediately start writing when you wake up, you'll fool yourself into thinking you have the most elaborate and profound dreams ever, although you'll code this as remembering. Dreams are so insubstantial that we very recently believed that everybody dreamed in black and white, and that dreaming in color was a sign of mental illness. This is a belief that faded completely and quickly alongside the rise of color tv and film. The implications of this are pretty devastating. People themselves believed they only dreamed in black and white, and later largely forgot that this was their experience. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White? http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm Media Influences How We Recall Our Dreams -- Do We Dream In Black And White Or Technicolor? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021224091445.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021224091445.h... ----- edit: so I disagree with the OP. There are no dreams, only recollections of dreams. When you look at the "dreamlike" imagery of generative AI, you're looking at something similar to what awake people construct dreams from, not dreams themselves.
- thetoon 4y ago
  Very interesting, but how do lucid dreaming could exist if there's nothing more than remembering? Are we, in fact, just remembering we've been lucid ? (and, thus, haven't really been?)
- sdiupIGPWEfh 4y ago
  I find this notion hard to reconcile with the occasional phenomenon of recalling the contents of an earlier dream only after several hours of having been awake.
felipemnoa 4y ago
You almost certainly dream. I believe there are medical tests to confirm that you are indeed dreaming. As to why you do not remember them? Beats me!
emmelaich 4y ago
If you're really curious you could use the Salvador Dali method: hold cutlery in your hand. When you sleep, you drop the cutlery and wake up from the noise. Repeat until hallucination. Probably not healthy for you though!
- electrondood 4y ago
  It needn't be cutlery, any object like your keys will work. I believe he held one in each hand, over metal plates on the floor to make a louder sound.

nomel 4y ago

There are devices made to detect and disturb you (with light, vibrations, etc) during REM sleep, to help with lucid dreaming. If you want to experience a dream, something like that might help, with the fairly safe assumption that you do enter REM sleep.

jhot 4y ago
I didn't realize this until I had kids and my sleep became constantly disturbed, but the only times I'm consciously aware of my dreams are when I'm awoken during the dream. If I am given the chance to have a peaceful night, then it's just an instantaneous time shift from falling asleep to awake with nothing in-between. So I could see how one of these types of devices could be handy to gently bring the consciousness out of deep sleep.

ThalesX 4y ago

Interestingly enough, I could be considered the opposite. Having aphantasia, I've never had a mental image, but I have very vivid dreams. Talking to my dad, he only dreams in black and white. It's just awesome the variability we humans have.

pessimizer 4y ago
> Childhood exposure to black-and-white television seems to be the common denominator. A study published this year, for example, found that people 25 and younger say they almost never dream in black and white. But people over 55 who grew up with little access to color television reported dreaming in black and white about a quarter of the time. Over all, 12 percent of people dream entirely in black and white. > Go back a half-century, and television’s impact on our closed-eye experiences becomes even clearer. In the 1940s, studies showed that three-quarters of Americans, including college students, reported “rarely” or “never” seeing any color in their dreams. Now, those numbers are reversed. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html

tracerbulletx 4y ago

People who go under anesthesia routinely have significant amounts of time where they are conscious and interacting with doctors, that are completely lost to memory. Everyone is configured uniquely, and you could just be someone whose memory is more shut off during sleep and still be "dreaming", if we just define dreaming as the brain continuing to operate on its model of the world in some capacity while sleeping.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
Retrograde amnesia as in Versed/midazolam?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pessimizer 4y ago

Don't worry about it. There are no such things as dreams; they're the brain bullshitting itself when you wake up in an inconsistent state. If you have a very complicated or imaginative life, your brain has to do a lot of work at night doing a very lossy compress of everything interesting that happened that day. If your sleep is restless or interrupted, you're more likely to still be in this process when you awake. Your mind can then attempt to rationalize how it reached this state [edit: filled with malformed images, associations and features that lack wholes.] If you have some combination of a life of habit and adequate rest, you'll less often fool yourself into thinking you dreamed. If you immediately start writing when you wake up, you'll fool yourself into thinking you have the most elaborate and profound dreams ever, although you'll code this as remembering. Dreams are so insubstantial that we very recently believed that everybody dreamed in black and white, and that dreaming in color was a sign of mental illness. This is a belief that faded completely and quickly alongside the rise of color tv and film. The implications of this are pretty devastating. People themselves believed they only dreamed in black and white, and later largely forgot that this was their experience. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White? http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm Media Influences How We Recall Our Dreams -- Do We Dream In Black And White Or Technicolor? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021224091445.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021224091445.h... ----- edit: so I disagree with the OP. There are no dreams, only recollections of dreams. When you look at the "dreamlike" imagery of generative AI, you're looking at something similar to what awake people construct dreams from, not dreams themselves.

thetoon 4y ago
Very interesting, but how do lucid dreaming could exist if there's nothing more than remembering? Are we, in fact, just remembering we've been lucid ? (and, thus, haven't really been?)
sdiupIGPWEfh 4y ago
I find this notion hard to reconcile with the occasional phenomenon of recalling the contents of an earlier dream only after several hours of having been awake.

felipemnoa 4y ago

You almost certainly dream. I believe there are medical tests to confirm that you are indeed dreaming. As to why you do not remember them? Beats me!

emmelaich 4y ago

If you're really curious you could use the Salvador Dali method: hold cutlery in your hand. When you sleep, you drop the cutlery and wake up from the noise. Repeat until hallucination. Probably not healthy for you though!

electrondood 4y ago
It needn't be cutlery, any object like your keys will work. I believe he held one in each hand, over metal plates on the floor to make a louder sound.