Insomnia making dreams more vivid?

I have noticed that lucid dreams are more common in my insomnia periods. (Which I hopefully will never have anymore, but that is another story.) Maybe, when we sleep lighter, it is easier to remember all dreams? There was a conversation in chat today about stress and insomnia affecting dreams, and at least two people had experienced that, at least a little.

Could the vivid dreams be caused by a REM rebound effect after days of too little sleep?

Is this a common effect of insomnia, or am i just being strange? :cool:

Nah, you’re not strange. It’s an odd case for me though. :wink:

As all of you know, I get insomnia almost every night. While I’ll agree that I do have some vivid ones, staying up long extended hours totally knocks out my recall. 24 hours? More? I’ll sleep the whole day and have whacked out dreams. They skip around and don’t make much sense. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few vivids with all the lost sleep, but mostly it just gets scrambled. :neutral:

I dont think insomnia causes REM rebound. Imsomniacs fall into deep sleep right away most likely when they do get some sleep, since this is the phase we seem to need most badly to recover. Perhaps if you sleep lighter then usual afterwards, you have more dreams to recall in the morning. However DR has no effect on amount of LD’s to me (I always remember at least the fact that I had a LD).

Well, I think I’ve had REM rebound yesterday, because all my dreams were very vivid and one of them was quite a nightmare. But this was after my insomnia period (didn’t sleep much for a week), not during the period. It could also be the fact my mind is working hard to deal with some real life matters. Unfortunately, more REM doesn’t mean more LDs for me. Today I slept for 10 hours, and my dreams were “normal” now. I think I’ve got a lot of deep sleep last night. Maybe it depends on your personal situation? If you need REM, you get REM rebound after insomnia, if you need deep sleep you get “deep sleep rebound”?

thats what i realised today. its taking me 1 hour to sleep when i go to bed normally. for the past 2 days , i slept in 10 minutes and i had zero dream recall. but today it took 1 hour for me to sleep and i woke up a lot in the night. i remember 6 dreams now .

I also experience the reverse: when I really try to remember dreams, I will wake up more often during the night and my sleep will be lighter!

I don’t get insomnia, but I’ve noticed that when I really, REALLY stay up late and I get very tired because of it (I’m a total night owl; I always go to bed at about 2 AM, so I’m talking about something like 4 AM)… my dreams seem to be longer and more vivid than usual. This may or may not be because I’m remembering them more clearly, but I do notice a significant difference in quality when I wake up.