Light enhances dream recollection?

Lately I've been occasionally sleeping with a light on in my bedroom and it seems to make enhance the vividness of dreams and the ability to recall them dreams when I wake up.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

All my dreams involve people chasing me and trying to kill me. So no, I don't try to make them more vivid.

Look into lucid dreaming. There are certain stages in your sleep cycle that if you flash your eyes with some type of light source, you will actually be able to control your dream and have a better memory of it.

[kurosh]

No. You misunderstood. You can train yourself to recognize the light and realize it's a dream, but it's not a natural reaction.

[Luzion]

The best way to enhancing dream recall is keeping a dream journal. Everytime you wake up, write down some general notes on what you dreamed. You will remember your dreams better, and in the future your dreams will not "dissolve" as quickly when you wake up.

For increasing how vivid your dreams get, you should look into various lucid dreaming techniques.

Check out this site http://www.ld4all.com to learn more about dreams and lucid dreaming in general, especially their forums. Good luck!

[Luzion]

[ QUOTE ]
No. You misunderstood. You can train yourself to recognize the light and realize it's a dream, but it's not a natural reaction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, thats a technique for inducing lucid dreams. There are devices you can wear like googles while going to sleep. They flash lights into your eyes at predetermined times when you figure you will have good REM activity. You actually see these light flashes while you dream. So all that you need to do is train yourself to recognize these light flashes as indicators that you are inside a dream.

Whatever. Maybe I should have googled first, but I was close. I imagine it probably isn't too hard to do if you know the cues. I watched a movie in psych about it where they just strapped the [censored] on their head and the people reported that they could remember their dreams better and some could even control them.

Thanks for the link. The only time I ever had a lucid dream was when I dreamt that I was arrested and taken to jail for jaywalking. It was so ludicrous I realized it had to be a dream.

Am I wrong about the light thing though? I have a 40w bulb in a lamp like this:


I aim it away from my head so it's not glaring at my eyes. Seems to work everytime.

[Luzion]

I never heard of sleeping with a light on, but if it works for you then keep doing it heh. For me, the dreams I remember the most vividly are when I wake up momentarily and fall back to sleep straight back into a dream. I do recommend you try keeping a dream journal if you are looking into increasing your dream recall.

Oh yeah, you should check out the forums of the link I posted. There is a section to increasing vividity or lucidity of your dreams by consuming certain foods before sleeping.