I just thought of a good analogy for my theory:
Think of it as reading. A sleeping person is like a reader who isn’t focused on what they are reading (remember your college days?), so the words all kinda run together and you see things that you recognize (individual words “the”, “dog”, “quarter”), but no pattern establishes to ‘mean’ something worth remembering.
An awake person is like a focused reader interested in the material and the patterns form meaning and are remembered.
*Maybe your brain is hard-wired to consider them nonsense? I just had a dream where a penguin (yes, the regular sized cute animal) was trying tenaciously to bite me, apparently to death. I was finally forced to hold it down and cut off its head with a pocket knife, which resulted in my dream being very unfruitful in the area of rest.
Perhaps we forget our dreams so we don’t remember when our brain messes up.*
I don’t understand - where did it mess up?
Quint Essense, my dreams are not nonsense, and I remember lots of them. If I spend the time to think about and analyze them, they are almost always the reflections of anxieties I’m having in my waking life. Often I will find insight into what’s bothering me and just by acknowledging that, can feel better about it. So I would not say that dreams are just a plethora of confusing and meaningless images. For me, they are notes from my unconscious about what’s going on down there. Well, that, and a healthy dose of wish fulfillment…
Why do some people remember their dreams all the time (like me) and other people almost never do? I have crappy sleep skills and wake up a lot, that’s my theory.
Psychological theories are all well and good, but I think that poor memory of dreams can be explained without saying that it’s best not to remember dreams.
The way memory and cognition works while dreaming is worth a look. Things that have been noted about common experiences in most peoples’ dreams - which can be explained by the differences in neurochemistry and which parts of the brain are active while dreaming.
I’ll leave with one other thought. How many of us really know what it’s like to be asleep?
Think it could be a real experience, which is impossible to remember?
I think I’ve posted this before. But once before I went to sleep, I specifically focused on asking myself for a message from my subconscious through a dream.
At some point that night, I dreamed that I stood surrounded by darkness. From somewhere beneath my feet emerged an arm and a hand holding a note. I took the note, opened it and read it. It said: subconscious.
Your dreams are composed of those things which you already know; you aren’t going to learn anything new from your dreams. I’ve often heard beautiful music in a dream only to wake up, recall it, and realize its actually utter shite 
I don’t think dreams are completely random. I have an excellent dream memory (developped through the techniques in my earlier post). Some certainly are brief and fleeting. But other times I have so-called “dream epics”: Incredible novel-worthy stories of full of adventure and human drama! Sure, there is still a complete disregard for the laws of physics, but they’re still sequential and progress naturally.
Normally, a dream progresses by itself. However, I find when I become lucid, this automatic dreaming stops. The dream becomes like a computer program paused, waiting for my input. Furthermore, if I try to relax and allow the dream to resume, I will lose my lucidity.
I guess this doesn’t have much to do with the OP, but gosh darnit, its just all so neat! 
This seems strange to me. Pretty much every time I have a “troubling” dream about something bad happening, I find myself (while still asleep) thinking “Whoa - it this real (in which case I’ve got big problems) or is this a dream (in which case I can relax)? Umm … yeah, that’s right, it’s a dream. Okay … lighten up. Relax.”
I often (though not always) do this without waking up.
I’ve only gotten “wise to the dream” once that I recall… I asked a person in the dream if it was a dream, to which they replied “yes.” Then I wrecked complete havoc without any fear of the consequences… Quite fun.
Is it normal to dream while still awake?
Often late at night, I will lie in bed with my gf. I’ll have my eyes closed, resting, while she does a crossword. I am totally aware of my surrounds - I can hear the dogs curling up on their beds, I can hear my gf asking herself, “two down, a five-letter word for fool, starts with I” etc etc. If she asks me for help with a word, I’m able to answer.
Yet, while all of this is going on, I am dreaming. I’ll see images of stuff, hear conversations from the dream etc. When I open my eyes, I have the sensation of having woken up from a dream. Yet I wasn’t asleep.
What gives? 
Max.
that state is referred to as “hypnogogic”. It is exactly what it seems to be, a state between sleep and wakefullness.
Usually when this occurs when falling asleep (as opposed to partially waking to this state) REM and actual dreaming is less likely and it is more a matter of free associating. Sounds you hear or other sensory input has a geat effect on what you may imagine hearing, remembering, or visualizing.
When waking to this state from REM sleep, the imagery and associations occuring can seem much more vivid and visual and often seem to have overwhelming detail. That sense of detail though tends to fade as you become more concious of your own thoughts influencing the imagery.
when dreams are said to serve wish fulfillment, does that mean a person gets what they really want in a dream? There have been many times where I really wanted something: when I was a child it was a certain toy, or in high school i remember having dreams where I was with a girl I had a crush on.
Whatever the mechanism, dreams sometimes allow us to have something we can’t have, and enjoy it at least for a little while. I remember waking up from these dreams and being severely dissapointed, realizing it was all fake.
many interesting theories here, btw…
Someone will probably be quick to disagree with me, but I’d refer to this as deja vu, or more precisely the best explanation for the uniquely odd feeling of deja vu.
Indeed Moo the Magic Cow, that is a very likely explanation and certainly the conclusion I have come to.
However, it should be noted that the feeling of deja vu does not match with post-sleep dream recall. That is to say, I often will remember a dream later in the day but not have any odd deja-vu sensation. Similarly, when I experience deja-vu, despite my theory, I am never able to pinpoint it to a dream. So it seems there are two different mechanisms at work here.
I do not sleep well.
I am in REM a lot.
I dream and remember a lot of them.
I have several that are reoccurring from childhood and I would realize they were dreams.
Some I could stop at will and some I could not. Still that way.
Most pilots have wire dreams where they are trying to take off of a street and the wires are getting thicker and they are unable to get through or stop the takeoff roll.
Some are in color.
Some I have sound, most do not.
When about 4-6 years old, I slept on bunk beds. I had the top. I would roll out and fall to the floor every night. My dad would not put up a rail. He did cut the wooden bunk bed down so I had less distance to fall. He figured I would learn sooner or later. I was told years later as family stories were told that him and my Mom would not go to sleep until they heard me hit the floor.
I learned that when I was having a falling dream, I was really falling and I would wake up and consciously remember to stay limp as the fall would not hurt near as much that way. This went on for almost a full summer.
I have many more dream stories and many that I still have and remember.
I have had what I call third party dreams where I stand and watch myself dream. I can not wake myself from that type even though I am aware that I am dreaming. They are usually very silly type dreams.
Of course I can sometimes restart a dream . ( never the really good ones L )
I have had dreams that were rough on SO’s who were sleeping with me.
I have literally dived out of bed in the course of a dreams. Etc.
Interesting thread. Engywook, as you seem to have some actual knowledge of the topic, are there different “kinds” of dreams that activate different areas of the brain?
Perhaps the real question isn’t why you have trouble remembering dreams but why you remember dreams at all. It seems to me that there are several distinct types of dreams. First, there are some dreams that are obviously driven by unconscious or, perhaps, conscious anxiety, e.g., the amazingly common dream that you are attending school but haven’t attended class all year.
There are the “classic” stream-of-consciousness dreams in which events are only loosely connected. These seem to be both the most common and the hardest to remember. There are also, however, dreams with fairly tightly woven narratives. Some of these are even pretty good, creatively speaking.
There are even “physical” dreams where you dream you are practicing some activity, like juggling. I think these are fairly rare, but I’ve had them on occasion. The bizzare thing is that they really “work” in some sense. I’ve actually been able to do the activity much better immediately after the dream than I could the day before. My WAG is that the dream is a sort of virtual practice that is laying down synapses. In a similar vein, there are dreams when you seem to be working on some mental problem. Watson (of Watson and Crick), for example, figured out the double helix structure of DNA based on a dream he had. Obviously, you can remember this kind of dream fairly well.
Finally, there are dreams where you realize you are dreaming. I’d be surprised if all of these different kinds of dreams were physiologically identical.
When dreaming (and this is I guess partly my own hpothesis and the influence of others) or in R.E.M. sleep, the brain is not simply moving data from short term to long term memory, and in fact a lot of short term memory goes directly into long term without this intermediary step.
The sleeping brain is actually more active than an awake brain in some areas. Wht has become fairly common belief is that your days memories, consisting of thoughts, sensory input, and social interactions are being compared, collated and acted on by the subconcious.
“Sleeping on” a problem an therefore be beneficial in that it allows these connections to past and pesnt knowledge and xperiences to be made. The fact that these connections would provoke imagery and memory is understandable since these are exactly wgat ar being accessed and correlated to.
When you become partially awke during this process it cn be very confusing, ut at the same time such wakefullness can allow a more active participation in the process with both good and bad ramifications.
Fears and anxieties can cause correlations and associations to be prejudiced by these feelings, and emotions caused by such may affect the very connections themselves.
Then again more active control can also mean more efficient and relevant associations can take place.
I apologize for what may have sounded dismissive in the above posts about the relevance of dreams. what I meant by “disjointed or nonsensical” was that often to those not actively/conciously trying to influence or study their thoughts (whether awake or asleep) the images and impressions can be confusing, nonsensical and seeingly irrelevant simply because they essentially awake during a process they don’t understand.
ok that’s it. Tomorrow I am buying a new keyboard…
I remember parts of my dreams fairly well, unless I wake up to something shocking (like an alarm clock), in which case I immediately forget. I say parts of my dreams because I will remember images, dialogue, and moods, but never the entire experience frame by frame.
I have repeating dreams a lot which I chalk up to my ability to remember those images.
My dreams sometimes help me to realize a thing I didn;t want to face in reality. Usually disturbing feelings or fears, displayed in horrible ways (a fear that someone I’m in love with is cheating on me is revealed by me actually viewing them sleeping with another woman).
Usually I notice that in dreams I struggle to remember something from reality and fail miserably. Like someone will ask me where I work in a dream and although I search my brain I can’t remember. It’s cool, because it’s like dreams and reality exist in your brain in mostly seperate, weird levels. : )
I disagree with this, slightly, in certian scenarios. Normally, your subconscious goes about its job indedpently, doing its nightly paperwork. However, achieving high-level lucidity seems to end this automatic process, and instead turns control over to your conscious mind. Everything just sort of freezes and waits for your input. At this point, your “mental bueauracracy” is no longer doing any work.
Interestingly though, I suppose its quite possible to practice a skill when HLL. Indeed, this would cause more relevant and efficient assocations to take place. I’ve never tried such an experiment when HLL.
I can’t seem to remember my dreams at all. Occasionally I’ll get up from one of those epic dreams and think something like “wow that could have been a book” then not a few seconds later I don’t remember a single thing from the dream. Very frustrating! 
Very occasionally will I remember a dream for more than a few minutes. I’m trying to think of a single dream I remember and I can only remember one, a nightmare that I had when I was maybe five. I can remember that one in very vivid detail as well.
It seems that as soon as I think of anything at all when I get up, including the fact that I had a dream, I’ll forget it.