"Epic dreaming was described by Schenck and Mahowald in 1995 and represents a dreaming disorder characterized by endless and exhausting dreams associated with morning tiredness and chronic daytime fatigue. The condition shows a strong female predominance (85%).
Stress. Stress and traumatic events can lead to vivid dreams. Researchers believe that this is due to the role that dreaming plays in memory and processing emotions. People who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more likely to have bad vivid dreams than people who do not.
Freud therefore identified two types of dreams: manifest dream and latent dream.
Risks of Lucid Dreaming. Although more research is needed, some experts suspect lucid dreaming could come with negative consequences. The most concerning potential dangers of lucid dreaming are disrupted sleep and mental health issues.
If you are having weird dreams, it may be due to stress, anxiety, or sleep deprivation. To stop having weird dreams, try managing stress levels and sticking to a sleep routine. If you wake up from a weird dream, use deep breathing or a relaxing activity to fall back asleep.
If you remember your dream, it could be that you simply woke up during it, so it's fresh in your mind, says Deborah Givan, MD, sleep specialist at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Or remembering could mean that you're remembering the very last dream you had rather than the dream in full.
Although some theorists have suggested that pain sensations cannot be part of the dreaming world, research has shown that pain sensations occur in about 1% of the dreams in healthy persons and in about 30% of patients with acute, severe pain.
That suggests that folks who are most likely to have lucid dreams tend to be self-reflective types who chew over thoughts in their heads. One small study in Germany tracked brain electrical activity in volunteers as they slept.
Our results suggest that frequent lucid dreaming is associated with increased functional connectivity between aPFC and temporoparietal association areas, regions normally deactivated during sleep.
Generally, lucid dreaming is quite rare. Only one half of the general population know the phenomenon from personal experience, approximately 20% have lucid dreams on a monthly basis, and only a minority of approximately 1% have lucid dreams several times a week.
Most experts believe that lucid dreams are the rarest type of dreams. While dreaming, you are conscious that you are dreaming but you keep on dreaming. According to researchers, 55 percent of people experience these types of dreams at least one time in their life.
Shared dreams definition
Shared dreaming is the idea that two or more people can share the same dream environment. The degree to which the dream is shared can vary, from simply having common elements or events that happen in each person's dream, to the entire dream being identical.
Some people, though, experience dream content that feels surprisingly realistic, and they remember it the next day. Such dreams are known as vivid dreams.
During non-REM sleep, the thalamus is inactive, but during REM sleep, when we are dreaming, the thalamus is active, sending the cerebral cortex images, sounds, and sensations, which is why we are able to hear, feel, and see in our dreams similarly to how we do when we are awake.
Vivid dreams are almost always associated with waking up during REM sleep when your dreams are most vivid and more easily remembered. While we may consider any dream that we experience in REM sleep “vivid,” with vivid dreaming, it's used to describe a particularly intense dream that felt very real.
In a lucid dream your senses are heightened. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch are all more extreme than what you would experience in real life. Emotional feelings may also be intensified. You'll feel a greater sense of happiness and pleasure from engaging in enjoyable activities.
While recurring dreams and disorienting dream loops are common during lucid dreams, it is not possible to get actually get stuck.
Although spontaneous commencement of lucid dreaming can occur as early as age 3, it seems most likely to happen around age 12–14 years and much less likely to occur after age 25 (Figure 1).
Lucid dreaming has the ability to increase awareness and control of the dreamer. Neurological evidence seems to support the seven awareness criteria suggested by Holzinger. During LD, not a single brain structure, but a whole network of brain regions is activated.
Many theories agree that recurring dreams are related to unresolved difficulties or conflicts in the dreamer's life. The presence of recurrent dreams has also been associated with lower levels of psychological wellbeing and the presence of symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Lucid dreaming happens when you're aware that you're dreaming. Often, you can control the dream's storyline and environment. It occurs during REM sleep. When used in therapy, lucid dreaming can help treat conditions like recurring nightmares and PTSD.
Given that keeping time schedules and appointments in waking life is of importance to almost everyone, the low frequency of clock dreams might be explained by novelty, that is, waking-life experiences that repeat themselves regularly do not show up in dreams that often.
Being able to feel touch in a dream means that you are coming to grips with your feelings—-you are comforting yourself! ... Dreams may mean nothing, or they may mean everything, depending on the person having the dream.