You've had some epic dreams

Inside our minds

Today we’re going to delve very deeply into the universe of our consciousness, into the universe of our minds—a realm we’re just beginning to understand because we’re also starting to develop the tools to explore it. Just as, until Galileo, the cosmos was limited to what could be seen with the naked eye, and then, starting with Galileo, telescopes and later radio telescopes and then with increasingly powerful space telescopes, we can go further and understand in greater detail what is happening out there.

But our dreams are also part of our lives—I’m referring to our actual consciousness, experiences you’ve actually lived through, not mere imagination. But have you ever had a dream so vivid that you believed it really happened, as if it had been implanted in your mind somehow? all of the above sounds like a movie script; in fact, it has appeared in some movies and TV series, but there is a type of dream that causes that effect—they are called epic dreams. These are a subset of special dreams; they feel immersive and completely real. As far as we know, no one has yet tried to implant ideas during one of those dreams, and let’s hope no one tries to do so, but the result could be unsettling, since what happens in those dreams is remembered in great detail and is also recalled as if it were part of lived memory.

The person remembers it as if it had actually happened, as if they had experienced it in real life.

Epic dreams are very hard to distinguish from reality, since they have a coherent and prolonged structure; they don’t have to be nightmares—in fact, epic dreams are quite boring—nor are they usually exciting or fantastical. There are some very specific cases, so don’t think you’re going to have one of these dreams and it’ll take you on an adventure in Narnia, which would be spectacular, but no, the truth is that they are hyper-realistic simulations, but of a daily routine in your normal life, with mundane, boring tasks and little else; perhaps an interaction with someone else who crosses your path in the dream or whom you’ve been thinking about, but what happens in the dream is a very ordinary life—they are neither nightmares nor adventures.

And this is also crucial for the memories of that dream to seem so real because it feels like a copy of your real life; if in that dream you had—even if it feels very meaningful and real—a unicorn, a dragon, or a fantastical creature appears, you can debunk it with logic, but if in that dream you’re experiencing things from your normal life—going to work, talking with your friends, going to the beach, or playing soccer—anything normal—it’s much harder to distinguish it from what you’ve actually experienced as a memory from the past.

And there is another crucial factor: these dreams do not last merely for the duration of the night; they distort time—or our sense of time—in a dramatic way. During the dream, the REM phase actually occurs—a phase that can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. That is the actual physical duration of that peak dream, yet the person feels as though they have lived an entire day. That’s actually lucky, because many people wake up exhausted and describe feeling as though they had lived weeks, months, or even years in that dream.

In some cases, people say they were performing mundane daily tasks, but what seemed to them was that these tasks were repetitive, as if on a loop for a very long time; they said they felt exhausted as if they had lived two lives. In most experiences, it is more a sensation of exhaustion than a real sense of the passage of time, but there are incredible stories, for example, the experience of a woman who one night went to bed, fell asleep, and had a dream—a dream that lasted 7 years. It wasn’t that she woke up feeling exhausted as if 7 years had passed; rather, she could recount 7 years of continuous fictional memories, which is the most mind-blowing part.

During the interview, the woman kept recounting things and experiences she’d had in that dream. Fortunately, they weren’t particularly extraordinary, and thankfully, none of those memories involved her having children. But imagine living a life for seven years, interacting with other people, and believing that all of it was real—seven years of experiences that she perceived as part of her actual life.

The researchers who documented her story said the woman showed confusion between dream and reality; she had cognitive fatigue and was constantly checking for reality. She was so affected by what she had experienced that during the interview and the follow-up they conducted with her, they observed that she was constantly making little gestures or using tricks to try to verify that what she was experiencing was real. This is important; fortunately, she showed no signs of neurodegeneration, and this detail is significant—and also curious, by the way. In most cases, epic dreams do not cause structural neurological damage; that is, there is no physical damage, nor does it mean you’ll develop Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s symptoms, or any other neurodegenerative disease. in fact, the MRIs and tests typically performed on people who have these kinds of dreams show that the brain remains healthy; it’s more like a functional sleep disorder.

Although the brain is physically healthy, it has difficulty mentally processing and storing dream experiences, so it stores them in the area of real memory. That’s why people wake up feeling extremely mentally and physically exhausted, as if they had lived through seven years in a single night.

A recommendation: although most cases are benign and there is no physical harm, it is always advisable to consult a sleep specialist—a neurologist or somnologist—to rule out other causes, because, well, in some specific cases it can be a symptom of another problem you have, though usually not, but in some specific cases it can be, and in any case, no one likes this kind of dream—you end up mentally and physically exhausted. Normally, like everyone else, you’d prefer to dream peacefully and wake up feeling energized the next day; unfortunately, as you get older, that becomes increasingly difficult.