I dream in color. Mark, on the other hand, dreams in high-definition IMAX, and the dialogue in his dreams is dubbed in poorly synchronized staccato Portuguese. But this doesn’t mean that either of us is crazy.
Dreaming in color is a perfectly normal phenomenon. Scientist have always reported that people dream in both color and black and white, but the concept that dreams were primarily in black and white evolved in the 1950s. At that time, television, movies, etc., were almost entirely in black and white, and this probably led to the false perception that dreaming also followed this monochromatic pattern.
In 1962, in an article in Science, Kahn, Dement, Fisher, and Barmack reported on the “Incidence of Color in Immediately Recalled Dreams.” These researchers woke their subjects up from REM sleep, and asked them if they dreamed in color. Eight-three percent of their dreamers reported dreaming in color, and then, presumably, went back to sleep.
By Billy Goldberg
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"Does it mean you are crazy if you dream in color?" was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 11:27 pm.