Dreaming In Black And White

I was speaking to a lady I know and respect very much, and she made the comment that in her understanding 90% of people dream in black and white. I personally have never had a dream in black and white, so this struck me as an odd statement.

I did an internet search on the topic and up came this. It says that dreams may be in color but sometimes no sensory information is received by the brain. So for example there will be grass, but it won't be green and it won't be black and white either. Your brain just won't have any color information associated with it.

I personally dream quite vividly and with great detail and lots of color. I think I can rule out the whole "90% of people dream in black and white" thing, but I would like to ask my fellow dreamers:

has anyone here had any experience dreaming in black and white, or noticed an absence of color in their dreams?

Most of the time your dreams are actually in black and white. However the dreams that you remember come from your latest REM cycle, which is the most active, therefore those dreams are coloured.

You brain also adds colour as you remember them because you dream about objects. Objects that you know are a certain colour so it figures it out. It's like looking at an object in very dim light. It's physically impossible to see colour in dim light (your cones have a bottom triggering range) and you are in fact picking things up in greyscale. Your brain adds colour later.

Experiment, go to a parking lot (very dimly lit, no lights) and figure out the colour of the cars there in order, write them down. Make sure they are cars that you don't know. Bechta you get half of them wrong.

Interesting. Sure, it may be hard to distinguish color in low light, but are you saying that dreams in the first cycles of REM are dimly lit? Also, do you mean that people never remember their dreams in black and white? If this is so, how has it been deduced that we dream without color?

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

I was speaking to a lady I know and respect very much, and she made the comment that in her understanding 90% of people dream in black and white. I personally have never had a dream in black and white, so this struck me as an odd statement.

I did an internet search on the topic and up came this. It says that dreams may be in color but sometimes no sensory information is received by the brain. So for example there will be grass, but it won't be green and it won't be black and white either. Your brain just won't have any color information associated with it.

I personally dream quite vividly and with great detail and lots of color. I think I can rule out the whole "90% of people dream in black and white" thing, but I would like to ask my fellow dreamers:

has anyone here had any experience dreaming in black and white, or noticed an absence of color in their dreams?

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I've had a dream about being the 'Elephant Man' which most parts were in black and white. :P

yeah great link. Sometimes I have these not-coloured-but-not-black-black-and-white-either and it's really fuzzy... haha it's interesting though :D

again great link :D

I can't remember ever dreaming without color. Color is something I tend to notice in dreams right away.

I've had two black and white dreams before, and both were nightmares. (this was of my own mind's creation, they weren't black and white to emulate a movie or anything.)
Every single other dream I've ever had has been colour though.

http://www.zyra.org.uk/dreamcol.htm


^ fixed link

Yeah I dreamed in black and white sometimes this only happens when I dream about events that happened along time ago (5 years plus) but anything besides that I tend to dream in color and sometimes I become aware of my dreams and if they're in black and white then if I want color it'll be in color sometimes it works but other times it don't.

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Originally Posted by Kromoh

yeah great link. Sometimes I have these not-coloured-but-not-black-black-and-white-either and it's really fuzzy... haha it's interesting though :D

again great link :D

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No problem, gald you like it :).

So, some people do in fact dream in black and white. Good to know. I have yet to experience this, maybe it would be good as a personal lucid task...

I think it's a myth. The brain's dreams are gathered from day to day experiences. Only on the very rare occasion should one dream in black and white in my opinion.

I've had one definite lucid experience where I was viewing my room in black and white from my bed (which was quite awesome to be honest), and a second one where I feel asleep on the couch, and saw the stereo about 4-5 feet away from and everything around it in black and white.

Really cool alternate reality perspective when it happens.

Well blade I dunno if you read the article o nthe link.

I wouldn't call this dreamign in black and white though. I'd call it dreaming without colour. For example, I know I had lunch today. I don't remember exactly doing it, but I know I did. That's because the mind only keeps important information (especially concerning dreams). So yeah, colour is usually present i ndreams, but not on everything.

So, I just realized something. Several times that I've become lucid, my dreams have been set in the dark. More often there is vivid colour, but sometimes, especially when I have false awakenings I'm dreaming "in the dark". I guess this is kind of like what it describes in the link above where it talks about dreaming with the absence of colour.

So here's another question: have any of you ever had a dream where it was dark? If so, how frequently does this occur for you?

I dream in vivid color, I remember them because they are always odd colors. Things never seem to be the colors I think they are suposed to be.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

So, I just realized something. Several times that I've become lucid, my dreams have been set in the dark. More often there is vivid colour, but sometimes, especially when I have false awakenings I'm dreaming "in the dark". I guess this is kind of like what it describes in the link above where it talks about dreaming with the absence of colour.

So here's another question: have any of you ever had a dream where it was dark? If so, how frequently does this occur for you?

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Do most of your dreams take place in night? Mine sure seem to. The ones I remember really well seem to take place at night, or in the dark. I wonder why that is? I am not a night kind of person.

ehhhh i dont think most of dreams are in black and white i have really good dream recollection and very very few are in black and white , but i guess everyone is different

I can see absolutely no reason whatsover that the human mind would dream in black and white. I can think of no biological or psychological reasoning as to why the brain would do this.

I think this is one of those old wives tales, a myth, one that probably stems from the era of black and white film and TV. Perhaps back them people had more dreams in black and white due to the daily media influence.

I've never had a black and white dream, and I remember a lot of dreams from a lot of varied REM cycles.

So i'd disagree with Ninjas opinion on this one (sorry ninja)

Colour is a very important aspect of the primate mind (and we're primates too) it has been vital for the survival of the species (knowing which foods are safe etc. etc.). To loose this vital piece of infomation when the brain processes information in our dreams, is akin to all dreams having no sound.

I think the following experiment would be interesting:

My hypothesis is that the black and white dream myth originated from the time of black and white media. If we were to to have 3 groups split into the following:

Group 1: watch only black and white films and TV for the next week. Record dreams and note if dreams are in colour or black and white.

Group 2: watch colour film and TV for the next week. Record dreams and note if dreams are in colour or black and white.

Group 3: control group, watch no TV or film for the next week. Record dreams a note if dreams are in colour or black and white.

Of course there is always the chance that the suggestion to look out for dreams in black and white, maybe enough to make us dream in black and white. So it's not a foolproof experiement. Still would be interesting.

Latest post: 12-29-2007, 01:58 AM :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by ninja9578

Most of the time your dreams are actually in black and white.

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I don't know where you came up with that idea, but that is certainly not the case with me. Dreams that are in totally black and white are ones that, strangely, I can remember with the most clarity. But otherwise, if my dreams aren't in full color (which they're usually not), they're in a roughly 8-bit color pallet...which may as well be just as dull and lifeless as black and white, but it's still not black and white.

Yea, Ninja, where exactly did you read that?

As a matter of fact, it appears that our media do affect our dreams.

Brains really are amazing, turning out to be more plastic and powerful than we imagined. It's hard to say what's impossible, though it's comforting to try.

In the 1950s and 1960s, most people dreamed in black & white. Now they more often report dreaming in color... as they did before the era of B&W TV. So, what you watch affects how you see. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencean...me-dreams.html

Interesting to consider, then, how our perceptual function is changing with high-quality digital animation, fractal art .. pervasive hard core porn...etc. etc.

I suspect that these technologies are also important in enabling the rise of the type of hyper-real dream experiences reported here ... perhaps a new phenomenon, overall.

PQ

my dad said he dreams in black and white.

i dont remember having any black and white dreams but i'm sure ive had them at some point. i dont really understand it either i dropped my psychophysio course when we started talking about perception and color and all the cones and what not.

ill learn bout it some time.

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Originally Posted by lucidspark64

my dad said he dreams in black and white.

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So does my dad. He says almost all of his dreams were in black and white. Strange how fathers' brains work these days

i remember having a dream when i was little where my cat died. but it was strange because im pretty sure that i had that dream in black and RED and white. like they way black and white is, except it also had shades of red as well. but i dont think ive ever had another dream with black and white and another color again