Last night I had a very vivid and complex dream about being friends with Cyndi Lauper, one of my all time pop icons. The dream started with me asking her to come work with a small group around music theory and to perform some of her hit songs. Then it got really weird — I won't try to explain any further.
I was reminded I've been wondering lately whether we dream in real time. So I put AI tool ChatGPT, which I use quite often, to the test and asked it. Here is the transcript of our "conversation":
I said:
Do humans dream in real time?
ChatGPT said:
Great question! The short answer is: sort of, but not exactly.
Here's what science suggests:
Dreams can feel like they're happening in real time, but they often aren’t. The brain compresses time in dreams — what feels like a long, complex story might actually unfold in a very short period, sometimes just seconds or a few minutes.
Most dreams occur during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, and these REM periods get longer as the night progresses. The final REM phase can lastup to 45 minutes — so dreams during that phase might play out closer to “real time.”
Experiments show some alignment with real time. In studies where lucid dreamers are asked to perform tasks like counting or moving their eyes in dreams, the timing of those tasks in the dream often corresponds roughly to real-world time. But it's not perfectly consistent.
So in summary:
Humans can dream in something close to real time, especially during REM sleep, but dream time is fluid — it can stretch, shrink, and skip around based on how your brain constructs the experience.
Want to hear about how time gets weird in dreams?
I said:
Yes. And can you add references to this and the previous answer as links or end notes.
ChatGPT said:
Absolutely — let’s dive into the weirdness of dream time first, then I’ll add references at the end.
🌀 How Time Gets Weird in Dreams
Dreams don’t obey clock time. You might:
- Live out a whole day in a dream that lasts only minutes.
- Jump from one scene to another with no transition.
- Suddenly know someone or something without any explanation — your brain just fills in backstory instantly.
This happens because dreams are narrative experiences, not literal recordings of time passing. The brain constructs them in fragments, drawing on memory, emotion, and association — not linear cause and effect.
Dream researcher J. Allan Hobson proposed that dreams result from the brain trying to make sense of internal signals during sleep — a kind of "storytelling on the fly." So dreams feel like they unfold in real time, even when they’re actually compressed or stitched together
discontinuously.
⏱️ Lucid Dreaming & Real-Time Studies
In studies with lucid dreamers (people aware they’re dreaming), researchers have asked them to:
- Count to ten
- Move their eyes left and right a certain number of times
Using eye movement tracking, scientists found that the time it took to do these tasks in dreams closely matched the real-world duration. But not always — sometimes dream time runs slightly slower or faster, showing that there’s some flexibility.
📚 References
Hobson, J.A. & McCarley, R.W. (1977). The brain as a dream-state generator: An activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process.
Science Journal Abstract
Erlacher, D. & Schredl, M. (2004). Time required for motor activity in lucid dreams.
PubMed Study
LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Being Awake & Aware in Your Dreams.
Book Summary
Revonsuo, A. (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming.
PDF via ResearchGate
(ChatGPT also created this post's image.)