A 2008 study about dreaming that was published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition (via National Library of Medicine) has some very interesting findings. According to the results, as described by The New York Times, the study involved two separate age groups: Participants aged 25 and under and participants over 55 years of age. Both groups were asked to record the color of their dreams in dream diaries, and while the former group reported that they rarely, if ever, experienced black-and-white dreams, the latter reported grayscale dreams about one out of every four times they slept.

The difference? While researchers couldn't know for sure, they found it telling that these dreams occurred far more frequently among people who had very likely watched a lot of black-and-white TV shows and movies in their younger days. This seems even more likely when viewed in the light of past research, which showed that in the 1940s, fully three-quarters of the U.S. population seldom dreamed in color at all. Who knew that TV and movies would have more of an effect on our dreaming minds than the ordinary objects we see in our day-to-day lives? And yet, oddly enough, this very much appears to be the case. What would be really interesting to know, however, would be whether before there was such a thing as black-and-white film, did everyone dream in color then, too? Without time travel, we may never know.