How many dreams do we really have?

I was talking to a friend about this, and it turns out he already had some knowledge on the subject, so it was pretty cool to talk to him about it. Then it just started getting frustrating. I told him about the sleep stages and whatnot, and he told me that once we enter unconciousness that we enter the dream world. Basically, he said we have one long dream throughout the night. His excuse for remembering only a few, is because you only remember the dream during the REM stages, since that's when the brain is most active...and that's why he said you think they are different dreams, because they happen hours apart(REM stages).

So do any of you actually know that the dreams we remember are different dreams, and not parts of one big one?

I would think you could make a convincing argument either way. After all, how do we define where a dream starts and ends? (other than waking up, of course)

From what I've seen, dreaming is a very individualized thing, and although most people share some common things about their dreams, everybody experiences them a little bit differently.

Yes, I'd say it's a question very much dependant on the definition of a dream. The brain is constantly active throughout the entire night, but mostly in the REM phases. Beyond that, entering and leaving the REM phase sort of kicks the crap out of your short-term memory, so you won't remember most of your dreams on the average night. So just to make things easier, I'd seperate dreams into short periods of the highest brain activity, with the relative low spots in between constituting the separation between dreams. Since you can't remember them, and they're hardly noticeable when you do, they just aren't worth counting as dreams. It's just easier to count individual dreams rather than count the whole thing as one big lump.

I don't know what the average is, but the most I've ever remembered from a normal night's sleep (7-9hrs) was 11. On average, I remember 3-5 per night, but upon awakening, I always feel others slipping away. I think we have many more dreams than we recall. I read a few years ago that the average number of dreams people have at night is 12. However, I don't remember where I got that info, so it's validity is questionable.