The world of dreams is an object of fascination for scientists the world over. Recently, Indian researchers (Naik, Singh Rathore, and Sushmita) interviewed 60 students, assessing various aspects of dreams: the frequency of dream memories, emotions in dreams, nightmares, lucid dreams, attitudes to dreams, the influence of dreams on wakefulness, exposure to literature about dreams.
Among other things, the authors raised the issue of gender differences. Their inquiry revealed that women mostly have a neutral attitude toward dreams, while men have a slightly more positive one. At the same time, women are more likely to write down their dreams in a diary or tell others about them. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to read about dreams. However, in terms of the frequency of nightmares or the emotionality of dreams, no significant differences were found.
In a lucid dream, as the authors remind, a person is aware of the fact that they are dreaming. As a result, they can consciously wake up or influence the dream scenario (or passively observe the events of the dream).
One interesting conclusion the researchers put forth is that there is a correlation between the frequency of nightmares in childhood and adulthood and the frequency of LD. In other words, those who often experienced nightmares as children continue to suffer from nightmares as adults, and are also more likely to experience lucid dreams with greater frequency. Nevertheless, as the authors add, these are just monodirectional statistics. It is, therefore, impossible to confidently establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the two phenomena.
Did you often suffer from nightmares as a child?
The article was published in December 2022 in the International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management.
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