When you're in the dreaming stage of sleep known as REM (Rapid Eye Movement),
impulses in your body can periodically engorge your genital region with blood,
just as if you were aroused. Sometimes that increased blood flow peaks and
releases, which results in an orgasm. It's the female version of a "wet
dream." And you don't even have to be having erotic thoughts for this to
happen.
While
many women sleep through the sexy sensation and never know about their
nighttime climax, others wake up. It definitely beats an alarm clock!
A
nocturnal emission or wet dream is a spontaneous orgasm during sleep that
includes ejaculation for a male or vaginal wetness or an orgasm (or both) for a
female. Nocturnal emissions are most common during adolescence and early young
adult years, but they may happen any time after puberty. It is possible for men
to wake up during a wet dream or simply to sleep through it, but for women,
some researchers have added the requirement that she should also awaken during
the orgasm and perceive that the orgasm happened before it counts as a wet
dream. Vaginal lubrication alone does not mean that the female had an orgasm.
In women
The
frequency of nocturnal emissions is variable, just as with men. In 1953, sex
researcher Alfred Kinsey found that nearly 40% of the women he interviewed had
had one or more nocturnal orgasms or wet dreams. Those who reported
experiencing these said that they usually had them several times a year and
that they first occurred as early as thirteen, and usually by the age of 21.
Kinsey defined female nocturnal orgasm as sexual arousal during sleep that
awakens one to perceive the experience of orgasm. Studies have found that more
boys and men have spontaneous nocturnal sexual experiences than girls and
women, but female wet dreams may be more difficult to identify with certainty
than male wet dreams because ejaculation is usually associated with male orgasm
while vaginal lubrication may not indicate orgasm.
Lucid dreaming
Sexual
activity is a commonly reported theme of lucid dreams. LaBerge, Greenleaf, and
Kedzierski (1983) undertook a pilot study to determine the extent to which
subjectively experienced sexual activity during REM lucid dreaming would be
reflected in physiological responses:
“Since
women report more orgasms in dreams than men do, we began with a female
subject. We recorded many different aspects of her physiology that would
normally be affected by sexual arousal, including respiration, heart rate,
vaginal muscle tone, and vaginal pulse amplitude. The experiment called for her
to make specific eye movement signals at the following points: when she
realized she was dreaming, when she began sexual activity (in the dream), and
when she experienced orgasm. She reported a lucid dream in which she carried
out the experimental task exactly as agreed upon. Our analysis revealed
significant correspondences between the dream activities she reported and all
but one of the physiological measures. During the fifteen-second section of her
physiological record which she signaled as the moment of orgasm, her vaginal
muscle activity, vaginal pulse amplitude, and respiration rate reached their
highest values of the night, and they also were considerably elevated in
comparison to the rest of the REM period. Contrary to expectation, heart rate
increased only slightly”
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