You might think that children have nightmares about monsters under the bed, but adults dream about stressful events such as deadlines. But is there any scientific evidence that dreams change as we age?
Although there are plausible mechanisms for how dreams change over time as we age, very few studies have investigated this topic.
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Studies investigating this idea have shown that people tend to report their dreams differently at different stages of life. Younger dreamers tend to see and feel more vividly, while older people recall more complex and less emotional situations.
One of the simplest and perhaps most common explanations for how our dreams adapt and evolve is called the “continuity hypothesis,” first proposed in 1971.
According to the theory, our dreams tend to reflect what we are experiencing during our waking hours. If you’re relaxing on vacation, you might see sun and sand as you fall asleep, but if you’re feeling anxious about work, you might be dragged to the office. But ultimately, the parallels between sleep and reality reveal little about why dreams change as we grow older.
“Changes in dreams across the lifespan reflect a complex interaction between brain development, sleep architecture, and cognitive-emotional maturation,” Bernardi said. Everything from memory to sleep quality can affect how you experience both dreams and their aftermath. “These factors determine not only how vivid your dreams are produced during sleep, but also how well you remember them when you wake up.”
How do dreams change with age?
Basic research into how children dream was conducted by sleep researcher David Foulkes from the 1970s to the 1990s. His research shows that young people’s dreams tend to be relatively simple, featuring animals, static objects, and simple interactions. (The study of children’s dreams is complicated, however, because the results depend on each child’s ability to understand what dreams are and how to communicate them to others.)
During adolescence, dreams tend to be more frequent and more vivid than in childhood, reflecting the many changes we are experiencing in our waking lives. Younger adolescents report dreams of falling, being chased, or confronting monsters or animals, while older adolescents re-experience the stress of school or new relationships.
As adults, dreams usually become a little more mundane. One study found that adults and older adults dream of arriving somewhere late and “trying something over and over again” more often than other age groups. Strange dreams and nightmares still occur, but the aggression of adolescence begins to fade and the complexity of dreams begins to reflect more of our waking life.
Research shows that as people get older, they tend to report that they don’t dream as much. Additionally, many people experience “white dreams,” in which they remember having a dream but are unsure of what happened in the dream. While some of this can be explained by the poorer sleep quality that older people tend to experience, much of this change has to do with our ability to accurately and descriptively remember what we see while we sleep, as is the case with dreams at any age.
“Dreams are defined as subjective experiences that occur during sleep,” Michael Schroedl, head of the sleep laboratory at Germany’s Central Institute for Mental Health, told Live Science. “All we get is a dream or a dream report, a recollection of experiences that occurred during sleep.”
At the end of life or in the process of death, people often report seeing their deceased loved one and recall in a dream a vision of them packing their bags and preparing to go on a trip. Studies of hospice patients have shown that these dreams are often comforting and reassuring, and reflect reflections that often occur at the end of life.
Sleep Quiz: How much do you know about sleep and dreams?
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