M.J. Rose

Scientists postulate that humans dream every night, and likely are dreaming all night long….

 

That’s a lot of information to remember and store. Is there a way to control what we remember?

 

 

The Tricky Science of Remembering Dreams

By Chelsea Harvey

 

“You wake in the early hours of the morning with your heart beating fast and the unsettling sense that you’ve just emerged from a strange dream —  but what was it? Vague images swim through your mind, faces you only half-recognize, and for a second you think it’s all coming back to you. Then you blink, and the memory is gone.

 

The subject of dream recall — that is, how and when and to what extent we remember our dreams — is a tricky topic, and one that’s fascinated researchers for decades. Why do we remember our dreams some nights, but not others? Why do some people seem to remember their dreams more often than others? We don’t have all the answers, but we know that our ability to remember our dreams in the morning most likely involves a complex set of factors including how we wake up, what our personalities are like and what happens inside our brains while we sleep.

 

The Critical Waking Period
The first thing to keep in mind is that you most certainly dream, even if you don’t remember doing it. Scientists generally believe that humans dream every night — and, probably, all night long.

 

“In every sleep stage, there’s some kind of subjective experience,” said Michael Schredl, a researcher in the sleep laboratory at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, and an expert on dream recall. Researchers widely agree that the reveries experienced during REM sleep are generally more intense, he said, but some type of dreaming is likely present in all stages…”

 

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