When our heads hit the pillow at night, our imagination turns on.  Some people dream every night.  Some dreams can be scary, some may have you waking up in tears, others may be funny.  Some dreams may seem so real that it feels like it’s happening in real life.  Some dreams are so vivid that we remember everything about them, while others we don’t remember at all.  Have you ever had a dream that you were being chased and you woke up sweating?  Almost every month, I wake up screaming bloody murder from a dream that I had, believe it or not.  So the question becomes how come some people remember their dreams, while others don’t?  What are the most common dreams?

People dream about a wide array of things.  For example, I often dream about being in my favorite vacation spot or eating my favorite food.  A dream expert by the name of Lauri Quinn Loewenberg did a study with 5,000 people.  He wanted to know which dreams were the most common.  First the participants took a survey.  The study found that the most common dream was the one in which a person’s spouse was cheating on them (Are).  In addition, many dreamed about their teeth falling out, being embarrassed or being chased (Are).  All of these dreams are negative, which is interesting.

On the other hand, many claim that they never dream at night however, this has been proven to be false considering that we all dream every night( Dreams).  It’s very interesting how some of us remember our dreams, while others don’t.  There was a study done with 41 participants, half stated that they were dream-rememberers.  The ones that were considered the dream-rememberers “On average, the self-identified rememberers said they recalled their dreams about five times per week, while the non-rememberers reported knowing what they had dreamed just twice per month” (Nuwer).  People who were the dream- rememberers, “have more activity in the temporo-parietal junction, which the researchers believe may allow the dreamer to focus more attention on external stimuli, promoting intra sleep wakefulness, which means dreams are better embedded into the sleeper’s memory” ( Nuwer). Dr. J. Allan Hobson from Harvard, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher, said it best, “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised” (What).  The point that Dr. Hobsons makes is very valid, we do many activities in life, yet we don’t remember every aspect of them.

In the end we must remember what Dr. Hobson said, “ dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness” (What).

                                                                   Works Cited 

“Are Your Dreams Telling You Something? The Truth Revealed! – The Digest.” The Digest Are

“Dreams: The Mysteries of Sleep.” Do We Dream Every Night? N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

Nuwer, Rachel. “Why Some People Always Remember Their Dreams, But Others Never Can.”

      Smithsonian. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

“What Can Our Dreams Tell Us?” The Learning Network What Can Our Dreams Tell Us

Your Dreams Telling You Something The Truth Revealed Comments. N.p., 06

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