The ability to remember i dreams it is influenced by several factors, including personality traitslike the importance we attribute to dreams and the tendency to wander with the mind, the sleep quality and even the period of the year. These are the reasons on which ours depends dream memory according to a recent study conducted by High School of IMT Lucca Studies and published on Communications Psychology. Even if we often do not remember it, We all dream And we do it for about Two hours every night. Yet, while some people manage to precisely recall the details of their dreams, others forget them immediately, coming to think they are not able to dream.
Because we do not remember dreams: scientific evidence
The Italian study from the High School of IMT Lucca Studies involved 204 participants between 18 and 70 years of age, inviting them to record their dreams daily in the morning for 15 days, simultaneously monitoring the sleep and thebrain.
The research showed that the people who they remember more easily their dreams are also those that attribute them a meaning and importance greater. For example, those who keep a dream diary or often reflect on their dream experiences tend to remember them more easily. A possible explanation is that pay attention to dreams would make us more resistant to morning distractions. Often, as soon as you wake up, our brain is immediately bombed by oneinfinity of stimuli: Concerns on the activities of the day, notifications on the phone, conversations with the partner. All these elements are real distractorswhich push dreams into the background until they will forget them. Contrary, those who pay greater attention to their dreams in the morning, as well as those who have one less tendency to distractiontends to remember them much better.
Another interesting aspect emerged from the study is that those who tend to daydream During the day they tend to better also remember night dreams. When we fantastic with the mind, in fact, our brain activates a network of areas called Default Mode Networkresponsible for mental states such as theintrospection and the “Mind Wandering“(mental wandering). According to the authors of the study, this greater awareness of one’s inner world could facilitate the process of coding And recovery of dreamsincreasing the chances of remembering them.
Credit: John Graner, Neuroimaging Department, National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20889, USA.
We dream while we sleep, therefore it is not surprising that the sleep quality affect the ability to remember them: a prolonged sleep spent in Rema phase of the sleep cycle characterized by rapid eyes of the eyes (Rem stands for Rapid Eye Movement) and from a brain activity that looks a lot like that of awake, is associated with one greater probability of remembering dreamswhile a Short sleep in the non-rehel phases (in particular in phase N3) it seems to reduce this ability.
Finally, curiously, also the season It affects our dreamlike memory. In springin fact, we tend to remember more dreams than the other periods of the year, even if the causes of this phenomenon are still unknown.
We do not dream only in the Rem phase: different types of dreams
Not all dreams are the same: some are like confused flasha mix of images, thoughts and sounds; others are real mental moviessometimes with a realistic story, other times completely absurd. As has been known for some time, dreams with a “history”, Occur during the REM Sleep phase. However, contrary to what was believed until a few years ago, We don’t only dream of the Rem phase: dreams can take place during All phases of the sleep cyclebut during sleep non-rehem tend to be simplerfragmented, almost like a series of confused thoughts or images. For this reason, it is more difficult to preserve a memory of these dreams, which we often forget instantly giving us the idea of not having dreamed at all.
Because it is so easy to forget dreams
The answer could reside in the norepinephrinea fundamental neurotransmitter for the Memory consolidation: During the day, norepinephrine helps us fix long -term memoriesbut when we sleep his levels collapse.
This makes it difficult for our brain to “save a copy” of dreams. In fact, we only remember them if there we wake up during or immediately after dreaming. Otherwise, the brain eliminates them, as if they had never existed. Precisely for this reason, paying attention to your dreams just wake up, before immersing yourself in the hustle and bustle of daily activities, represents an effective strategy to remember them better.
Even if it may seem like a sin, forget dreams is a protective mechanism. If we remember them for a long time, we would risk confuse them with reality. Forgetting them, however, the brain helps us keep separate The dreamlike world with daily life.
