While asleep, some individuals dream. Dreams affect the mood of an individual, and often they have supernatural connections ( biblical stories), suggesting there may be a connection with the divine.

Personally, I’ve had many dreams that have no natural explanation. Like many research activities we wonder what can be the explanation for them.

To that end, we have collaborated with UK Biobank and others to study dreams.

UK Biobank and our team asked over 180,000 individuals in the UK how often they have nightmares.

This first glimpse of the data gives a very interesting depiction of what is happening at a large scale. First, we find that in the UK Biobank data approximately 25-30% of individuals answer that they never have nightmares. Interestingly, approximately 0.4% of individuals report that they have either daily or almost daily nightmares.

120,000 individuals responded to how often they can remember their dreams.

Approximately 1% report that they remember their dreams on a daily basis. About 5% report that they can’t recall their dreams.

We are aggregating data for dreams and nightmares and tying to genetics, blood biomarkers, and other phenotype measurements that may be available to us to better understand them.