Why people remember only some dreams

According to researchers, although we don't always remember them, we have dreams every night.Only people who lose the ability to dream as a result of brain damage or disease are an exception.

Scientists say there is no definitive answer to why people don't remember all their dreams, as well as to many other questions about dreams. Still, there are some clues as to why it is so difficult to keep your dreams in your mind, Popular Science writes. Among them are sleep phases and avoiding alarms.

Dream memory is usually short-lived

Research shows that you won't be able to remember your dream if you don't wake up during or immediately after it.

"We recall our dreams best when we pay attention to them while conscious, she explains, otherwise they fade away," explains Erin Wamsley, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Furman University, where she studies sleep and dreams. According to her, this could potentially be due to the difference in neurotransmitter activity that occurs when we fall asleep. However, it should be understood that waking up several times during the night is okay, but if it happens more often, than it is more likely a sleep disorder.

Sleep phases

In addition to waking up, which is important for remembering dreams, when and how you wake up also plays a crucial role. This concerns sleep phases, time, and alarms.

Sleep occurs in four distinct stages: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and three types of non-REM (NREM) sleep, which repeat in a cycle throughout the night.

NREM 1 sleep is the lightest stage that a person falls into first after waking up - it lasts only a few minutes at a time.

During NREM 2 sleep, brain waves slow down and electrical activity occurs in short bursts. Almost half of an adult's sleep time is spent here, and from this stage, your brain can move on to either NREM 3 or REM sleep.

In the NREM 3 sleep, also known as deep sleep, brain waves slow down even further and remain more consistent. This type of sleep occurs relatively early in the night, is crucial for quality rest, and takes up about a quarter of your sleep time.

REM sleep comes next, when the nervous activity resembles that of a waking brain. The eyes move rapidly under the eyelids (hence the name), and a person spends about a quarter of the night in this phase.

When do dreams occur

Dreams occur during REM sleep.

"And it’s true that many of our most vivid, most story-like, and longest dreams tend to occur during this phase," says Wamsley. However, she notes that dreaming can occur at every stage of sleep, and people sometimes report intense dreams if they are awakened in a stage other than REM sleep. Still, the likelihood of remembering such detailed dreams is highest when you wake up in REM sleep.

"There is about an 80% chance of remembering a dream waking up from rapid eye movement sleep and about a 50% chance waking up from other sleep stages," she adds.

Time of night

The less time you have before waking up, the more active your brain becomes. For many people, morning dreams can be particularly vivid and memorable.

"We experience a greater amount of brain activity and lighter and more active sleep because our internal biological rhythm gives us this activation cue to become alert," explains the scientist.

The impact of alarm clock

However, it is believed that the common method of waking up with alarms can counteract this system. This is partly because alarms can bring a person out of deep sleep, when dream recall is lower, rather than allowing us to naturally emerge from a lighter phase.

So, if your goal is to remember your dreams, giving up your alarm clock for a few days can be an easy way to achieve this.

The researchers also advise using the practice of waking up and asking yourself what you just dreamed, "Just like any memory task, if you practice it, you can get better at it," explains Jing Zhang, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she studies sleep and memory.

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