Thread: When do babies dream, and what do they dream about?

Good question

My guess is that babies start to dream quite early, from 26 to 38 weeks after fertilization the part of the brain thalamus is devolped completely, thalamus basically makes sensory input possible, consciousness and the nature of sleep is also deeply connected with this area.

Both fetus and infants both have REM sleep and most scienftic data suggest that they do indeed dream, the content of the dreams are however unknown. (No surprise )

Many people who have children also notice that babies frequently wake up in the night crying, bad dream? Sometimes they can be seen smiling, "talking" and so on.

I don't know what a fetus would dream of, I think more vague and abstract dreams sounds reasonable. I guess an infant would mostly dream of the parents, or just dream about the events of the day, that which were percieved at least.

Another intersting thing is that some studies have shown that fetuses have DMT(Dimethyltryptamine) trips. DMT is a tryptamine, which naturally occurs in the body, the functions are not known but it's one of the strongest psychedelics known to humans! So apperently we have some great psycedelic trips in birth and death (In the moments of death DMT is released in vast amounts).

Read also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/science/22qna.html

Thanks, that's a brilliant answer! Told me everything I need to know! Really interesting!