# The speed of dreams. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 30, 2002, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654 "2002-12-30T09:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![fauxpas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e480ec/32.png) [@fauxpas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fauxpas)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/1 "2002-12-30T09:00:05Z")
I’ve heard of the speed of sound, the speed of light, the speed of time, but I’ve wondered for some time now…the speed of dreams? When we go to sleep haven’t you ever wondered why when you sleep your dreams are really short and when you awake, the time you’ve spent sleeping has been around 9 to 10 hours (depends your age and ways of your every day life) How did the time go by so quickly? How quick is a dream occuring for it to go by quickly? ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/2 "2002-12-30T09:10:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by fauxpas \* > \*\*I’ve heard of the speed of sound, the speed of light, the speed of time, but I’ve wondered for some time now…the speed of dreams? When we go to sleep haven’t you ever wondered why when you sleep your dreams are really short and when you awake, the time you’ve spent sleeping has been around 9 to 10 hours (depends your age and ways of your every day life) How did the time go by so quickly? How quick is a dream occuring for it to go by quickly? \*\* WAG: It seems fast because you have been asleep for an unknown number of hours before you began dreaming and/or after you finish dreaming, so while it may seem that the dream spanned the whole night, you actually spent _x_ hours asleep, not dreaming and not concious of the passage of time. ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/3 "2002-12-30T09:14:11Z")
Yep. Most of the time, when you’re sleeping, you don’t dream. The speed of time? Is that the same thing as the speed of age? ---
**Author:** ![fauxpas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e480ec/32.png) [@fauxpas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fauxpas)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/4 "2002-12-30T09:14:22Z")
hmmm…either I’m really too stupid to understand this phenomenom, or by far fathom the layout of it. ---
**Author:** ![joe\_iguana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/2acd7d/32.png) [@joe\_iguana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joe_iguana)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/5 "2002-12-30T09:27:17Z")
remember…we only dream during REM(rapid eye movement) sleeping periods…somewhere around 3 hours typically…not much out of an average 8 hour rest…but it is usually split up in to smaller sections…some people actually have problems waking up before leaving rem sleep…it gives you a great feeling of disorientation and confusion…i’m sure we’ve all had that happen time to time…as for the passage of time during dreaming…well, just consider the philosophical view of that…time is merely subjective to the individual…we can live a very long life or a very short one, it all depends upon how we personally see it. time is not a solid object to truly be measured, especially in the mind. ---
**Author:** ![Nishroch\_Order](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Nishroch\_Order](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nishroch_Order)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/6 "2002-12-30T16:01:00Z")
WAG: your brain does not remember most of your dreams, the ones you remember are probably something particularly weird or of significance to you. although your brain registers all of your dreams, they are stored in such a disorganised fashion that your brain does not recognise them as dreams during recollection. maybe as deja vu. ---
**Author:** ![CuriousCanuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@CuriousCanuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CuriousCanuck)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/7 "2002-12-30T16:32:15Z")
[hijack] What I would like to know is why I can have dreams that seem to last hours between the 9 minute snooze intervals on my alarm clock. That has always baffled me… I can live a whole day in a dream not more than 9 minutes long… [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![fauxpas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e480ec/32.png) [@fauxpas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fauxpas)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/8 "2002-12-30T17:01:48Z")
hmmm…rem…heard of it but slightly believed it. ---
**Author:** ![Nishroch\_Order](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Nishroch\_Order](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nishroch_Order)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/9 "2002-12-30T17:38:52Z")
i’ve had dreams that seem to last days…although they seem long…you cannot remember the little things you would do in real life. like, wiping mouth or something…and distances pass very quickly…you simply remember doing alot of things…so along time seem to pass. these things may happen directly one after another. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/10 "2002-12-30T18:08:48Z")
I read an article (I think in the Skeptical Enquirer) years ago where the passage of time in dreams was studied. They got lucid dreamers to look left (shifting eyes is the only body movement you can count on when you’re asleep), count ten seconds, and then look left again. Dreamers averaged about 13 seconds between looks to the left - about the same as conscious people. Of course, a lucid dream may be qualitatively different from non-lucid dreams, particularly in regard to passage of time, but this study’s best guess is that time in dreams passes about like real time. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/11 "2002-12-30T23:15:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by fauxpas \* > \*\*hmmm…rem…heard of it but slightly believed it. \*\* Which means what? That you don’t really believe in REM? It’s not something to be believed or not believed, it’s a known physical phenomena. It is simply a stage of sleep where your eyes move rapidly back and forth, hence Rapid Eye Movement. It is normally associated with dreaming. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/12 "2002-12-30T23:22:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by fauxpas \* > \*\*hmmm…rem…heard of it but slightly believed it. \*\* Which means what? That you don’t really believe in REM? It’s not something to be believed or not believed, it’s a known physical phenomena. It is simply a stage of sleep where your eyes move rapidly back and forth, hence Rapid Eye Movement. It is normally associated with dreaming. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2002, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/13 "2002-12-30T23:50:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CuriousCanuck \* > \*\*[hijack] > > What I would like to know is why I can have dreams that seem to last hours between the 9 minute snooze intervals on my alarm clock. That has always baffled me… I can live a whole day in a dream not more than 9 minutes long… > > [/hijack] \*\* I heard somewhere (good cite huh?) that dreams (or rather the brain patterns and REM that we associate with them) only last seconds anyway. There is much debate about what dreams really are and what, if anything, they are for, but consider - you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a dream where a whole day’s experiences _really_ get compressed into a few minutes, and a dream lasting a few minutes that happens to construct a ‘day’s worth’ of memories of experiences (Like that Arnie film, _Total Recall_). If we were to accept that dreams consist largely of some sort of process of filing/sorting/analysing previous experiences, we could quite easily hypothesise that in the nine minutes between snooze alarms, your brain patched together a bunch of hyperlinks to experience fragments you already had in memory. ---
**Author:** ![zia\_nova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/bc79bd/32.png) [@zia\_nova](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zia_nova)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/14 "2002-12-31T00:01:16Z")
If you think about it when you’re daydreaming you let your mind wander. It’s very easy to lose track of time, it passes quickly or it can seem like you’ve been sitting there ages when only a couple of minutes has gone by. The mind is a strange place. Dream-time isn’t real-time. I guess it’s just one of those things that you end up shrugging your shoulders at. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/15 "2002-12-31T01:53:08Z")
Dreams are electrical impulses (as all thoughts are) so they would have a corresponding speed. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/16 "2002-12-31T02:00:06Z")
Neural signals are electrochemical - sort of like a mexican wave of ion pumps - far far slower than electrical signals on a copper wire. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/17 "2002-12-31T02:06:42Z")
Yeah, yeah, same difference. I didn’t the exact speed, just the kind (type) of speed. But good noticing, anyway. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/18 "2002-12-31T02:09:10Z")
\*…didn’t mean… ---
**Author:** ![fauxpas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e480ec/32.png) [@fauxpas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fauxpas)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-speed-of-dreams/145654/19 "2002-12-31T06:01:38Z")
Yes, I do believe in it, what I meant since its also a band I thought it was just for something else. Sorry.