I had this crazy dream last night where I was riding a rollercoaster in space while solving a Rubik’s cube. It got me thinking—why do we vividly remember some dreams but completely forget the majority of them? Is it something to do with brain chemistry, or just the way our memory works during sleep?Would love to hear what others think!
I believe I read that if we wake while they are still going on they are fresh in our minds.
I can testify to that.
I think this is the right answer, and I can also attest to it.
I know that if someone tells me about the “really amazing” dream that they had last night I can never remember that.
I wonder, too, why we may have recurring dreams (I had one about my grandmother wrestling a bear) or recurring themes. Within recent years, I have dreams that are set in “my house” or “my work” - at least that’s what I know them to be in the dream, but they’re nothing like my actual house or workplace.
The brain in repose is a magical and mysterious place.
Some dreams strike a particular chord with us and become ingrained in our minds if they’re sufficiently vivid, pleasurable or disturbing. Describing them to someone else probably helps retention.
My unproven (unprovable?) theory is that a proportion of déjà vu experiences are triggered by previously forgotten dreams.
During REM sleep, when dreams occur, the brain’s ability to transfer memories to long-term memory is suppressed. So most dreams don’t reach long-term memory and are forgotten. In most cases, we remember dreams only if we wake up during or shortly after the dream. With the dream still in short-term memory, the now-awake brain regains the ability to transfer the memory of the dream to long-term memory. Light sleepers have been shown to remember dreams more often than heavy sleepers, probably simply because they are more likely to be awakened during a dream.
One of the main functions of REM sleep is to organize memories acquired during the previous day. Perhaps the suppression of the formation of new long-term memories during that sleep phase is part of that process.
It would also be maladaptive to retain long-term memories of dreams, since one might remember counterfactual events and take actions based on those erroneous memories (hey, I remember that I can jump out of this tree and fly away from that predator below me).
This could be a “just me” thing or it could apply to other folks too, but I think part of why I forget most of my dreams shortly after I wake up is that they make very little narrative sense. There are events, and they’re in a sequence, I guess, but they’d make for a really senseless movie plot. I have feelings about the events as they are occurring, with intentions and reactions, but once I’m awake I go “huh? why would I be concerned about that?” or whatever.
On the almost vanishingly few times this has apparently happened to me, the dream disintegrates if I actually think about it and try to remember. My conscious mind wants coherence, which the dreaming mind does not supply.
I can probably remember three somewhat coherent dreams I have had in my life, and they were all ones that made a very vivid impression on me at the time, and were closely related to strongly emotional events that were going on in my life. I can’t say whether I was awoken during them. I’m relatively sure I’ve been awakened from REM sleep more times than that, but remembered few or none of those dreams.
My guess is that we dream about what causes us anxiety, as a way of dealing with that anxiety. And the situations and themes and settings and people who cause us anxiety may tend to persist over time.
They say dreams happen during REM sleep that REM sleep is late in the sleeping cycle. I rarely sleep long enough to reach that state during the night without waking up. However, I have had vivid dreams when falling asleep on the La-Z-Boy for only five or ten minutes during the daytime, something I find very odd indeed.
I wish I could remember my dreams. The ones I do recall could make great short stories.
I note repeated reports, and personal experience, that you can remember stuff from dreams that you decide to remember, in dream.
Perhaps your brain does some kind of wake-up / shut-down cycle to make that happen.
One reason is you could have untreated sleep apnea. If you are constantly waking up and falling back asleep, that makes dreams more vivid.
Another reason is you may wake up at different parts of your sleep cycle. If you wake up during or right after your REM cycle, you are more likely to remember your dreams.
I cultivated Hypnagogic hallucinations of flying (waking dreams), until one day, standing at the top of a flight of stairs, I considered flying down.
I rejected the idea, decided that I was on an unsafe path, and stopped doing that.