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April 15, 2011

Strange But True!

Q. From a Roaming Shores, Ohio, reader: “I recently read in a prestigious medical journal (well, actually on the back of a Snapple bottle cap) that the average human dream lasts only two to three seconds. I don't get it. My husband says he never remembers his dreams but almost every night I have what seem like long and convoluted dreams that take several minutes to relate (usually to his great chagrin). What gives?”

A. “Most of the Snapple caps I've seen are fairly accurate but the above ‘fact' is completely wrong,” says Harvard's Deidre Barrett, author of “The Committee of Sleep.” Most dreams occur in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, taking place about every 90 minutes throughout the night so that an average sleeper has five REM periods per night totaling 90 to 120 minutes. The first REM is usually slightly under 10 minutes, then subsequent ones grow longer up to about an hour, with the wake-up dream most likely to be remembered. “There is nothing to suggest that we would remember only seconds of our many minutes of dream time.”


 
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