Is Dream Time REALLY shorter than Reality? (Theory)

**INeverWakeUp** · 09-10-2013 03:51 AM

Hey DV! So I've found myself taking Forensic Science this year for school and we learned a small but very interesting fact. Most people say you have 5-6 dreams a night. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More recent science shows we have 250 dreams every night, and can only remember a few if any. So what I got from this, was that perhaps dream time is really the same as waking life time. Maybe, we have more false awakenings than we think in the night? Maybe we forget about them all when we awake? Think about it: You remember one dream which is about 5-10 minutes. You think that took up most of the night. However, this was one of around 250 dreams. Each other dream filled those time gaps we perceived to be our dream time not fitting with real time. Now this is just a small theory I thought of. I don't know if someone else has already said something about this before, but these are just my thoughts. What do you all think?

**hurricane1124** · 09-10-2013 05:18 AM

I say maybe, possibly.

**Carabas** · 09-10-2013 05:52 AM

Did your class mention where that number came from, specifically?

It's quoted on a few books/websites - apparently the idea is that we have 50 dreams per REM period - but I can't find a source for which study came up with that number, or how.

**Well now what?** · 09-10-2013 09:04 AM

Hello.
Such discussions have been done before here. I would be interested if you could reference the "more recent science" you mentioned.
I think the best piece of advice I can give is that we have to be cautious when determining when one dream ends and another begins. We may think we have had many dreams, but it may simply just be a single dream with a lot of scene changes. I have said elsewhere on this forum that people tend to confabulate dream reports, linking together unrelated elements of the dream in a rationally logical way.
But yes, if you could provide a reference for that work you mentioned, I'd be grateful because I could then go and read it.
Thanks.

**realdealmagic** · 09-10-2013 06:39 PM

What the others said, please provide a reference to this information!

**MissyDawhMajii** · 09-17-2013 01:00 PM

250?! Oh my gosh....O_o;; even 50 WHOOH. o___O;;;

But how is that even possable...

**Scionox** · 09-17-2013 02:43 PM

250? I don't have so many for sure, i have this sense with which i almost always can 'feel' dreams without actually recalling them. Maybe whoever did that report measured differently what is a single dream? And dream time is often different from waking time, i am for sure had some really long dreams including one that lasted a week while i slept for half of hour and also had really short few min dreams that were also half a hour waking time.

**TiredPhil** · 09-17-2013 07:28 PM

I recently tried an experiment with audio fed into the ears whilst sleeping.
I remember five, or six distinct dreams before being woken up.
Around 20 mins had passed. This includes the time it took me to get to sleep.

**Dreamcapture** · 09-17-2013 07:59 PM

One interesting experiment would be to create something that eases you from sleep gradually from your dream space so it would be easier to record the dream and then collect information over time and eventually gauge more accurately how many dreams each person can have and draw distinctions between multiple small ones and one long dream w/ many scenes using fresh information. Some friends of mine are working on something like this now, we have named it discover shadow and SHADOW as a short name.

**Prelin** · 09-18-2013 04:06 AM

I have really good dream recall and I had a very specific experience. My alarm clock went off in the real world, and I hit "snooze" for 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, I dreamed that I was on vacation in Oslo (never been there) with an ex of mine. It was nighttime, and we had an early flight home the next day. I was moving my dirty laundry from the washer to the dryer of the "house" we were renting, whatever it was supposed to be in the dream, and we became aware of a commotion outside. We went out and saw that a nearby building was on fire, and fire trucks were spraying water on it. They proceeded also to spray nearby buildings to control embers. As the fire died down, my ex and I noticed the Northern Lights, and we stood out there watching them for a while before going back in to finish packing. I was getting sleepy, so I decided that I'd just get my laundry out of the dryer the next morning and quickly pack it then, and I went to bed (the dream bed). I somehow "slept" in the dream and woke up the next morning to get my laundry packed before my flight. I was shocked to find that the water from the firetrucks the night before had somehow filled the dryer, and I couldn't imagine how I was going to get my soaked clothes onto the plane. It was then that my alarm clock went off again in the real world after the second 10-minute snooze, and I had experienced a full 12 hours in the dream.

Now, I'm not sure this is real time. It's more likely that your brain just skips to the highlights and fills in the time in-between with "feelings" of time passing. After all, I can't remember setting the alarm clock for my flight, or what temperature I put the dryer on, or even whether I brushed my teeth before bed. Nonetheless, that dream time felt REALLY long, as if I'd been on vacation. I still thought the experience was amazing, even if the extra time isn't real.