Everyone sees dreams, but not everyone, however, remembers what they saw. Scientists say that most of us see black and white dreams, but about colored dreams they have many different versions, literally refuting each other... Why do we see colored dreams?

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Conducted research in the field of sleep provides a clear explanation, yes, patients with schizophrenia often see colorful dreams and more often remember them precisely because of their brightness, but there is no clear answer to whether colored dreams are unique to schizophrenics (present and future). However, scientists immediately say that frequent and memorable color dreams are a sign of special brain activity, typical for different borderline disorders, because most people see black and white dreams and many do not remember them.

Many scientists around the world are conducting research in this area, and most of them are inclined to believe that consciousness, subjected to some kind of change (stress, grief, overexertion), most often produces colorful dreams. True, many people enthusiastically talk about their color visions, considering them pleasant.

A study conducted using tomography showed that people with schizophrenia, in addition to colorful dreams, most often see nightmares, but this does not happen to people with a healthy psyche. Scientists strongly recommend that those who see colorful, vivid dreams, interspersed with nightmares, devote special attention to your health, because they are sure that such people are potential patients in psychiatric hospitals.

Of course, there is absolutely no need to panic; many people, including completely healthy people, have colorful dreams.

But if suddenly your dreams, which were previously black and white, not memorable and not bright, have acquired a particularly bright color and this scares you, then for your own peace of mind you can undergo an examination.

It is, of course, impossible to diagnose schizophrenia on the basis of dreams alone.

Diagnosis requires at least several symptoms. For example, they pay attention to nervous symptoms, which are manifested by a decrease in the emotional background. There is also isolation, deficit positive emotions. At the same time, the patient ceases to be interested professional activity, does not meet the standards of behavior in socially.

Often the onset of the disease is manifested by aggression and avoidance of social contacts. The person becomes emotionally unrestrained and unfriendly to others.

At the same time initial signs schizophrenia often exists in isolation, rather long time(sometimes for decades), and productive symptoms are often absent. When manifestations of psychosis are added to these manifestations, we can already talk about the presence of a clinically developed picture of the disease. Often delusions and hallucinations are added here, as well as acute forgetfulness (when a person cannot remember what he did just a few minutes ago). All this can result in psychosis and go into terminal stage"voices" in my head.

There are several more hypotheses about why we have colorful dreams.

Hypothesis 1: Everyone sees colored and black-and-white dreams, but the latter are not remembered, and colored ones are often accompanied by special events in a person’s life (in most cases positive) - and play with these “colors” in a dream. But overwork and fatigue are reflected in black and white dreams that we don't remember.

Hypothesis 2: They see colorful dreams talented people

It has been proven that creative people- poets, artists, musicians, etc. They dream in color much more often than ordinary people. Even if you are not interested in anything like that, perhaps you have some talent that you have not yet discovered. It is true that here scientists are returning again to the issue of schizophrenia, bearing in mind that all creative people, in some sense, are schizophrenics, present and future. Moreover, in this case, schizophrenia is explained by the fact that creative people go beyond the stereotypes imposed by society and this leads to psychosis, and then to schizophrenia. So, in essence, schizophrenia is a disease of a person who has given up on himself. And by and large, we are all predisposed to this disease.

Hypothesis 3: Only highly intelligent people see colorful dreams

Today, this hypothesis, which was firmly established earlier, has been refuted. As a result of research, scientists have found that brightly colored dreams can be seen by impressionable and emotional people of any social stratum. And the degree of intelligence can only influence the intricacy of the plot of a dream; the more educated a person is, the more twisted the scenario and the more events it contains.

Hypothesis 4: Colored dreams are a consequence of the advent of color cinema

The hypothesis was put forward and tested by American scientists. It turned out that young people (under 25 years old) see colorful dreams more often than adult population(after 55). A version was put forward that older people saw only black and white movies in childhood, and the emotional perception of the world is formed in childhood.

However, it is worth noting that remembering the color of a dream is a subjective process; a person tends to remember objects as they are imprinted in their memory, and not in black and white.

Researchers are not entirely sure whether dreams are actually black and white and are colored at the moment of remembering, or whether they really have color from the very beginning. In many experiments, many people have made mistakes and the previously shown black and white picture described as colored, because normal person who adequately perceives reality, is prone to association certain colors with objects: sky - blue, grass - green, orange - orange, etc.

Responsible for the imagery and vividness of dreams right hemisphere brain, and the left - for their frequency. If the right hemisphere is well developed, which is typical for left-handed people, then dreams are emotional and colorful.

Experiments conducted by scientists have made it possible to establish that left-handed people are more likely than others to have continuous dreams - i.e. seeing something interesting one night can trigger continued sleep the next. Such “series” are practically closed to right-handers, because they have a more developed left half brain, responsible for mathematical abilities and logic. In right-handed people, dreams are more realistic, closer to everyday routine and less often brightly colored. If you want dreams that are more vivid and continue, write with your left hand; by the way, this exercise develops intuition.

Scientists have also revealed a direct relationship between the brightness of sleep and the severity of the past day.

A difficult day most often gives a black and white dream, a joyful and pleasant one - colored, full of numerous events - gives a bright hectic dream, in grief and serious problems people most often see a “toffee” dream - actions in a dream slow down, you cannot run, get something, or catch up with someone.

By the way, a black and white dream is not always alarming, but a color dream is good, and it happens the other way around.

By the way, returning to the issue of health - if you often stumble and fall in your sleep, especially from a high cliff - check your heart, just in case.

Thus, sleep can be considered the second form of human life: too important processes occur in the body during sleep. And dreams are a reflection of external reality intertwined with inner world, which is formed throughout our lives, starting from the prenatal period of development.

If you often have dreams and remember them, you can create own dream book.

According to scientists, our brain analyzes all the events of the past day millions of times faster than the most powerful computer, and sometimes what is analyzed leads to certain conclusions that are later realized in reality, i.e. essentially predicts the future.

If you combine what you dreamed about the day before the event, you can later predict what will happen. All dream books are based on this principle - excrement - for money, long hair- to the road, to see yourself naked - to illness, a tooth falling out - to grief, a dog - to a friend, a child - a boy - to toil, a girl - to be surprised, a dead person - to a change in the weather, gold - to trouble, and a caught fish - to pregnancy and etc.

By the way, a person cannot see in a dream what he has never seen. Even the most terrible monsters crawling out to you from the depths of your consciousness have already been encountered somewhere - in a movie, in a picture, because the brain remembers even a glimpse.

Therefore, look more at the positive, pleasant and joyful in your life and have good dreams!

People dream at all stages of the night's rest. Some of them have incredibly emotional and colorful dreams, but for most they appear only in black and white. There is more than one theory that explains why colored dreams appear. There is no clear opinion to this day.

Why are dreams colorful?

As a rule, dreams are colored or black and white at night. They are a reflection of reality, intertwined with the dreamer’s inner world during the rest period. In a dream, information received during the day begins to be sorted with the help of nerve impulses. At the same time, the brain is disconnected from all external stimuli, and the person is able to perceive information that he ignored while awake.

If dreams are black and white, it means that with their help personal problems are realized. As a rule, those who see such dreams more often are not inclined to show their emotions and have an analytical mindset. Even during a night's rest left hemisphere their brain does not stop solving problems and processing information. Because of this, dreams constantly appear in black and white.

Colorful dreams, which can be called real night movies, appear in people with an imaginative type of thinking. There are several theories about the origin of such dreams.

There is no exact explanation for this phenomenon in medicine. As a rule, they are characteristic of creative individuals who have a better developed right hemisphere of the brain.

Who has colorful dreams?

Most people have black and white dreams. In many ways, the palette of colors in dreams depends on your state of health and mood. The coloring of night dreams is also influenced by the psycho-emotional state. Most often, vivid pictures are observed by the following individuals:

• extroverts, people prone to emotions. Their life is filled with communication, impressions and experiences;
• highly intelligent individuals. The plots of their dreams are quite complex and colorful;
• left-handed. They see colorful dreams because right side their brain is much more developed;
• children. In childhood, the world is perceived brightly, and life is filled with impressions. Therefore, many colors appear in dreams.

It has been noted that women are more likely to have vivid, memorable dreams than men, since the former are more emotional. They are also observed in people who decide to quit smoking. This is due to the fact that they endocrine system begins to function much more actively and makes dreams more colorful.

Interpretation of vivid dreams

Not a single dream book gives an unambiguous explanation of why colored dreams occur. The interpretation of a colorful dream largely depends on which particular color shades predominated in the night's dreams.

What do colored dreams mean?

If a person previously saw black and white dreams and suddenly had a dream in color, this indicates that he is growing up. Multi-colored dreams indicate that you need to become more responsible, not think about past mistakes and boldly move forward, reaching new heights. Colorful images encourage action, regardless of the obstacles encountered along the way.

The meaning of certain colors

Colored and black and white dreams have different meaning. It is extremely important to immediately remember how the dreams were colored. Depending on the prevailing color scheme, the interpretation will be as follows:

Light shades most often foreshadow good changes. When dark ones appear, you need to be more attentive to the people around you and your inner experiences.

Colorful dreams appear various reasons. Most often they are observed in emotional people. Sometimes similar pictures appear during periods of depression. In any case, they do not bode well.

Why do I have colorful dreams?

Everyone will have dreams. Some people see them in black and white, while others have bright colorful dreams. Waking up after such a dream is pleasant, the mood is not overshadowed by anything, the person is full of energy. Let's look at the question of why we have colorful dreams.

Reasons influencing the color of dreams

• Emotional state. Scientists have found that this directly affects not only what kind of dreams we see, but also how they are colored. If a person lives a fulfilling life, does not suffer from depression and enjoys every day, his dreams will reflect all these factors. Conversely, if you are tired, your emotional state is far from normal, and you experience a feeling of apathy, then your dreams are likely to be gray and dull.
• Creative people dream in color much more often than others. Their rich imagination itself contributes to this process. And impressionability and emotionality add color.
• It is also believed that such dreams occur only to people with high intelligence.
• There is an opinion that color dreams are directly related to the age of cinematography. Although whether or not to believe in such a fact is a questionable question. Research conducted by scientists has revealed that the younger generation sees vivid dreams more often than older people. This is directly related to watching films. And since the older generation had the opportunity to watch only black and white films, conclusions were drawn accordingly.
• Psychological state. Doctors also put forward a hypothesis about who has colorful, vivid dreams. They, according to experts, are a deviation from normal condition person. This means that if you don’t see black and white dreams, simply put, you have mental problems or you suffer from schizophrenia. This hypothesis appeared after a series of studies by Professor Bravin Stent, but today many scientists refute this theory.

And yet our science cannot give an exact answer to the question « Why do I always have colorful dreams? » There are many guesses and assumptions around this topic, but not one of them has yet been fully proven. Some people believe that dreams have no color, but that they take on colors in your imagination. Based on what we want to see. Good sleep our subconscious will paint it in bright colors, while the gloomy one will endow it with dark ones, gray flowers. Remembering what you dreamed, you involuntarily add bright accents and colors. And by the way, even if you don’t remember that you had a dream last night, this does not mean at all that it is true. During the night a person sees several scenes at once, and he manages to remember only a few of them.

How to identify a prophetic dream

After interpreting a dream, we think when dreams come true. Whether the dream will come true or not depends on which lunar day you dreamed about and on what day of the week. Let's look into lunar calendar- which moon phase today and what a lunar day.

By comparing the data on lunar day and by the day of the week one can guess whether the prophecy of the dream will come true.

Why do you have black and white dreams?

Miller's Dream Book

We spend about a third of our lives sleeping (hence, if you're lucky enough to live to 90, you'll sleep through 30 of them), but many people don't think much about nighttime sleep (or daytime sleep if you work nights). Frankly, we're too busy everyday life to look at sleep as something other than a necessary rest for the soul and body.

Now let's talk about your dreams. Besides the fact that you have to be asleep to dream, there are many variations of dreams. According to rumor, most people dream in color, while some dream in black and white. No one can say with certainty why this happens, just as no one knows why a certain percentage of people are left-handed. In our practice, we have found that most people have colorful dreams unless they are depressed about something.

Otherwise they are able to remember less dreams, and these dreams are often in black and white (with the exception of nightmares, which can be very bright in color).

Why do you have black and white dreams?

Dream Book of the Wanderer

Some people say they only dream in black and white when they first start paying attention to their dreams in treatment or during individual dream work. As they try to concentrate on remembering their dreams, many of them say they begin to dream in color.

Once you start writing down your black and white dreams, start thinking about the dominant components of your dreams. Do you dream about people you know or strangers, or celebrities? Do you talk in your sleep or wake up laughing? Are you observing the action in a black-and-white dream from the outside, or are you the main participant?

The reality and meaning of dreams

A dream with pleasant images is considered good sign. It promises joy from successful changes in life and travel. A monotonous dream that could not be remembered in detail indicates a low social activity sleeping. Predictions come true on the coming Friday or Saturday.

The images seen in a dream allow the dreamer to realize it current state affairs and point to the right life guidelines. The semantic chain of such dreams is usually confusing. But with the right approach to decoding, you can understand where to direct your energy.

The dream speaks of new turns of events that will soon occur. It indicates areas of life and issues that need to be addressed in the near future. Dreams on the waxing Moon are prophetic.

Dreams remain an underexplored area human life and often become the basis for numerous theories. One of them says that only brilliant people or schizophrenics see bright and colorful dreams, and black and white dreams are the prerogative of ordinary people. At the same time, almost everyone has had colored dreams in their lives. However, some cannot say at all what colors their dreams are painted in.

The Village asked experts what determines color perception in a dream.

Inna Ganzeeva

psychologist

I recently read about an experiment by scientists from Texas. Professor Bravin Stent conducted a study with a group of volunteers aged 25–47 years. He divided all men and women into three groups. The first included people diagnosed with schizophrenia, the second included those with hereditary signs of this disease, and the third included healthy subjects. It turned out that schizophrenics see colorful dreams and nightmares 20 times more often.

They tried to repeat experiments of this kind, and the numbers, to put it mildly, varied. Simply put, these statistics are simply far-fetched. From my own experience, I will say that there is no relationship between your normality and the color of your dreams: almost all of my patients see color and black and white dreams alternately. Science does not know whether the dollar exchange rate affects this, magnetic storms, mood, season or diet.

Also for a long time There was a theory that only highly intelligent people dreamed in color. This controversial hypothesis of American scientists was refuted by a professor of the Department of Nervous Diseases at Medical Academy Elena Korabelnikova. She conducted a study and found that brightly colored dreams can be seen by impressionable and emotional people of any intellectual level.

Roman Buzunov

somnologist, president of the Association of Somnologists, head of the Center for Sleep Medicine of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Clinical Sanatorium "Barvikha"" of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation

Alas, so far medicine knows too little about dreams to give a definite answer to this question. We have to be content with guesses. And this is understandable: humanity has been dreaming for thousands of years, but the age of somnology (the science that studies sleep and its disorders) is only a little more than half a century. For this short term We have not yet managed to reveal all the mysteries of the dream.

What are dreams? According to modern ideas, dreams are a product night work brain Contrary to the belief that the entire body rests at night, the brain of a sleeping person works almost more actively than during the day. For the brain, sleep is a complex, multi-stage process during which it needs to perform many important functions.

Discharge occurs in a dream important hormones: somatotropin (growth hormone), testosterone and others; the body is “scanned” for problems and violations, which are immediately corrected. Cells responsible for immunity are intensively formed, and energy resources are replenished. Finally, sleep performs an informational function: during it, the information received during the day continues to be analyzed and transferred from short term memory into the long term. This is a process that occurs during the so-called REM stage of sleep, and is accompanied by the appearance of dreams. From the general information flow processed by the brain, individual images and sensations are isolated, which in a chaotic order form dreams.

All people color vision, however, some of us see dreams in color, while others see them in black and white. In attempts to explain this phenomenon, a variety of hypotheses have been put forward. For example, there is an opinion that people who have reduced vision see dreams in “poor quality,” that is, in black and white. There is also a version that colored dreams are somehow connected with the advent of color television. Like, before, when TVs were black and white, people usually saw monochrome dreams, but now, when we are surrounded by color screens, there are more of us who dream in color. Another interesting misconception: some believe that the colors of dreams can change depending on your diet. Allegedly, in order to have rich, “sunny” dreams, you need to eat more oranges, tangerines and other bright foods. There are other possible explanations, but all of them are either clearly incorrect or have not yet been proven.

Question about color and black and white dreams quite ambiguous also because many people don’t even know what kind of dreams do they have?

Today it is known for sure that color perception in a dream depends on the human psyche. For example, a study was conducted abroad in which scientists discovered a pattern: emotional people’s dreams are often colored, while pragmatic and rational people’s dreams are usually black and white. Another fact: the perception of colors in a dream changes with different mental illness. With schizophrenia and psychosis, dreams become brighter, and with depression, on the contrary, they “dim.” But this does not mean at all that colored dreams are the path to schizophrenia.

The perception of colors in a dream also depends on the work of the brain, or rather, on its changes under the influence of various chemicals. For example, smokers and people taking sleeping pills have colorful and more vivid dreams. According to some observations, drugs from the group of statins (drugs that lower cholesterol levels in the blood) have some effect on dreams: when they are abruptly discontinued, dreams become brighter.

The question of color and black and white dreams is also quite controversial because many people do not even know what kind of dreams they have. Ask ten people about this, and more than half of them will find it difficult to answer. And even those for whom this question does not cause difficulties cannot be sure that they are right. Imagine: a person dreams of an object familiar to him, for example a yellow mug. Even if in a dream he sees it in black and white, after waking up he will be sure that the mug is yellow, because the brain identifies this object and complements the image with the necessary details.

Perhaps we have black and white and color dreams mixed together, we just don’t notice it, because a person remembers only a small fraction of the dreams he sees.

I can only say with confidence that with medical point vision does not matter whether a person’s dreams are colored or black and white. This does not have any effect on character, health or any other parameters.

Illustration: Olya Volk