A young child’s dreams may differ from those of an elderly care patient. Here we present what research has found about how our dreams change over time?
Abby Wilson wrote in Live Science, “You might assume that children have nightmares about monsters under the bed, while adults dream about stressful events like debt or bills, but is there any scientific evidence that shows that dreams change as we age?”
Although there are plausible mechanisms for how aging causes dreams to change over time, very little research has explored this topic.
“Dreaming depends on the neural systems involved in imagination, memory and emotion, all of which develop and reorganize with age,” Dr. Giulio Bernardi, head of the Sleep, Plasticity and Conscious Experience (SPACE) research group at the IMT School of Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy, told Live Science. However, “surprisingly few studies have systematically examined how dreams change over the lifespan.”
Studies that have investigated this idea have shown that people tend to describe their dreams differently at different stages of their lives. While younger dreamers tend to see and feel more clearly, older people remember 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,” which was first proposed in 1971.
According to this theory, our dreams tend to reflect what we experience in our waking lives. If we are relaxing on vacation, we may see sun and sand when sleeping, but if we are worried about work, we may move to the office. But ultimately, the similarities between sleep and reality reveal little about why our dreams change as we get older.
“Changes in dreams over the life course reflect the complex interplay between brain development, sleep architecture, and cognitive-affective maturation,” Bernardi said. Everything from memory to sleep quality can affect how we experience dreams and their implications: “These factors determine not only how vivid dreams are during sleep, but also how likely we are to remember them upon waking.”
How dreams change with age
Sleep researcher David Foulkes conducted basic research into how children dream from the 1970s to the 1990s. According to his research, young people’s dreams tend to be relatively straightforward – they involve animals, static objects, and simple interactions. (However, research on children’s dreams is complex because the results depend on each child’s ability to understand what dreams are and how to communicate them to others.)
In adolescence, dreams tend to become more frequent and more vivid than in childhood, reflecting the many changes we experience in our waking lives. While younger teens report dreams about falling, being chased, and encountering monsters or animals, older teens re-experience the pressures of school.
In adulthood, dreams usually become more monotonous. One study found that adults and older adults dream of arriving somewhere late and “trying to do something over and over again” more than other age groups. Strange dreams and nightmares still occur, but the aggressiveness of adolescence begins to fade, and the complexity of dreams begins to more closely reflect our waking lives.
Studies show that in old age, people tend not to report having as many dreams. Many also suffer from “white dreams,” where they remember a dream but are not entirely sure what happened during it. While some of this can be explained by the decreased sleep quality that older people tend to experience, much of this change – as with dreams at all ages – has to do with the ability to accurately and describe what we saw in our sleep.
Do dreams really reveal our deepest secrets?
“Dreaming is defined as subjective experiences that occur during sleep. What we get is just a dream or a dream report, which is a recall of those experiences that occurred during sleep,” Michael Schradel, head of the sleep laboratory at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Germany, told Live Science.
At the end of life, during the dying process, people often report seeing their departed loved ones and recall visions of packing up and preparing for a trip in their dreams. Studies of nursing home patients have found that these dreams are often comforting and comforting, reflecting the contemplation that often occurs at the end of life.