dreams in black & white?/duration of dreams? (Is it true

that dreams are always “seen” or thought in black & white? I also heard that, even if you think your dream is an hour long, it’s really only a minute or two. Can someone verify?

Well, considering i’m pretty sure people can remain in REM up to 30 minutes, I imagine that second bit is wrong. I’m sure there’s a way to squeeze more time out of a dream, but I doubt only a minute or two for an hour long dream.

Anyway, I’d like to know what makes you think about that B&W bit, I always have coloured dreams, even if they’re dark or blurry, my dreams ALWAYS have color.

Both are incorrect.

Dreams can indeed - and most often do - have colour. Some people, however, often hace black and white dreams. This isn’t the norm, though.

And as dreams take place in the REM period, it’s possible for a dream to last up to an hour. The longer your asleep, the longer your dreams get.

There is no hard evidence to support that ‘dream time’ is any different to ‘real time’. More likely, the difference in perception comes from the ‘movie technique’ that dreams sometimes use - skipping out the boring bits, to make the dream seem longer than it actually is.

Equally, our perception of time can change with how occupied our minds are, which is why time seems to go by faster when we’re doing something interesting. This doesn’t mean that when you’re doing something boring, time is going by slower, it just means that it appears to go by slower. This may also come into effect in dreams, but it couldn’t make a two minute dream feel like more than (say) six minutes, it couldn’t make a dream feel an hour long.

My friend says he dreams in black and white.
I heard that’s how it was when I was little but I just payed attention and saw that dream are in colour. I wonder who came up with that.

I have noticed only a very slight difference in precieved time in dreams. Always so that they feel longer. After I wake up. and go through the dream, It seems like it could have gone by faster. I don’t buy the scene skip argument completely. I mean. there is something to it, but, when I watch a movie. And they skip a nights sleep for instance. I ALWAYS know that it’s just a skip. I never think I actually sat and watched someone sleep. There is never any confusion about how long the movie was.

The final “image type” of specific dream can vary a lot. For example, although most of dreams I got were having same colorful perception as WL, I also had few black-and-white ones. When I was younger I also used to have dreams that looked like a cartoon, a computer game or even a comic.

The longer youre asleep, the SHORTER the REM phase gets and thus your dreams become more frequent but SHORTER.

And I always dream in colour.

LMS:

No no, REM get’s longer through the night.

I’ve never had a B&W dream. Back before color TV most people dreamt in B&W though.

Um, no they didn’t. Life was still in colour before colour t.v. was invented y’know…

Soo, when people had only radios, their dreams consisted of sounds with no images? :tongue:

Always been color for me … :yes:

I’m not going to speculate on dream time, because i can’t prove either way. however, on the B & W vs. color issue, i’ve had both. my ND’s are always full color, and just as realistic as WL, with the exception of some glaring lapses in physics. my LD’s on the other hand, were B & W first, then after about 6 or 7, they suddenly went color.

And even before that their dreams were usually only textadventures, obviously.

[color=orange]
You are in a dark, slightly blurry room.
There is a table with a bottle on it.
The obvious exits are north and south.

[/color]

What we expect to happen in dreams happens…
So if in the past people heard that black and white dreams were normal, they would have been more likely to dream in black and white.

I had a sort of Sin City dream once… But I’d watched the movie the night before… Apart from that, never anything B&W.

Well Keegster I have a scientific book that yes is outdated but really did report about people dreaming more in black and white during the time of no color television.