Statistically, the average person doesn't remember 4/5 of their dreams. However, this ability can be fully developed.
Memory of dreams
Scientists claim that every person dreams every night. Saying that "we dreamed" is the nth number of dreams, a person actually means how many dreams he managed to remember. The correctness of the expression "dreaming" is also questionable, because even people who are blind from birth can experience dreams. In addition to visual images, in dreams you can listen to music, smell a flower, taste food, or feel someone's touch. Therefore, the problem of people who do not see dreams at night is not that dreams “do not come to them” for some reason, but that they cannot remember them in the morning. Why does this problem arise?
Scientists from the United States set up an experiment on mice, during which they recorded the state of their neurons and observed which pairs of neurons pair up. During wakefulness, this process looked like this: first, a nerve cell in the hippocampus was activated, and after milliseconds a neuron in the neocortex was synchronized with it.
Thus, it can be assumed that memories are formed in the hippocampus and then transferred to a storage - the neocortex, the outer layer of the cerebral cortex. It is obvious that the speed of interaction between these two zones affects the reliability of information storage. The researchers further examined the interaction of the two zones during sleep. During the so-called REM period (the period of rapid eye movement), a person sees most of the dreams, the two layers were synchronized much less often. Memories should have formed, but immediately disappeared or had to look hazy.
From this it may follow that a person remembers almost nothing of what he dreams about due to a kind of natural mechanism that does not allow dreams to remain in the memory of the external cortex of the brain. Perhaps this resistance to storing memories of dreams has a protective function, and the person seems to get rid of unnecessary information, which dreams are. But, unfortunately, there is not enough information from scientists to test this theory.
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Biology of dreams
From a biological point of view, a person can forget their dreams due to the peculiarities of the brain.
Some researchers believe that in some people, the area on the border of the temporal and parietal cortex works much stronger than in others. They came to this conclusion after conducting an experiment with the participation of two types of people - those who often remember their dreams and those who hardly remember them at all.
In the brains of the latter, insufficient activity of that very zone was found, and in the former, the region is so developed that it is easy for them to memorize large amounts of information in a dream. However, those who easily remember what happened to them in a dream face a side effect - as a rule, anxious and sensitive sleep. A calmer and more measured deep sleep is characteristic just for those who forget their dreams.
As evidence of this fact, scientists cite the example of patients who had a trauma to this joint of the cerebral lobes, and this damage led to a complete loss of the ability to remember dreams.
Those who have developed sensitive sleep often wake up at night and respond quickly to environmental stimuli during sleep. All this happens precisely because of the hyperactivity of the parietotemporal region, the features of which lead to spontaneous brain activity not only during sleep, but also during wakefulness.
In a study of sleeping subjects, the scientists measured their brain activity using electroencephalography. Participants in the experiment listened to soothing music during sleep, but sometimes the researchers quietly pronounced the name of the sleeper. The response to their own name was approximately the same for everyone, but among the awake, a similar experiment showed that the response to the name is higher in those people who can remember the content of their dreams.
Rapid eye movement period
Traditionally, it is believed that the REM period is the most productive in terms of remembering dreams. Only during this period, as scientists believe, can a person dream. REM periods increase in duration and frequency throughout the night: first there is the shortest first sleep period (no longer than ten minutes), and the last sleep can last up to an hour.
As for the dreams themselves, during the REM period there can be several of them, and they are most often separated by short awakenings - it is at this moment, if you collect all the willpower, you can remember - and it is better to immediately write down - the dream in all its details. In this case, the memory of sleep can be retained if the awakening time was sufficient to "write" sleep into the neocortex. Otherwise, you will remember only one of the last dreams.
Why do you need to remember dreams?
Our body is designed in such a way that sometimes it cannot remember dreams. But why, in essence, memorize them? After all, the times when prophetic dreams were considered harbingers of the future, fortune-telling from dreams is now also not in high esteem. The Freudian concept assumes that those fragments of dreams that a person managed to remember are the most important, while others, "suppressed", are practically meaningless to study. However, the reasons for remembering dreams are still there.
Russian dream researcher Vladimir Gromov believes that dreams can strongly influence our emotional state after waking up: "After bad dreams, we feel that we 'got up on the wrong foot', while pleasant dreams cause emotional uplift, cheerfulness and self-confidence." The problem is that if a person does not remember the bad dream he had, he will be perplexed as to why he is in a bad mood all day.
Zaming even unpleasant dreams, you can bring benefit to your body - by analyzing the cause of anxiety, it is much easier to dispel the trail of a bad dream. In addition, without memorizing dreams, you can miss one of the infrequent amazing dreams or even a lucid dream, which can become one of the brightest impressions in your entire life.
How to remember a dream?
Despite the natural obstacles, a person can concentrate and make efforts to be able to remember dreams. Initially, it must be said that memorizing dreams requires a certain tension, which should not be accompanied by unnecessary worries.
First, adjust your alarm so that you don't wake up too abruptly. At the same time, you need to get enough sleep - a sleepy person will hardly remember dreams. When you wake up, the first thing in your head should be the question "What did I dream about?"
It doesn't hurt to lie down a little with your eyes closed, slowly trying to remember some individual fragments. Then you can already start writing them down, and so small details will be remembered. Sometimes, as if already forgotten, fragments of dreams can come closer to night.
If you can't remember dreams in a natural way, it makes sense to keep a dream diary. In it, the dreamer must record not only the plots of his dreams, but also their characteristic features, in order to subsequently classify dreams. And this helps to remember them. Journaling quickly develops the habit of remembering at least one dream a night. However, this is not the limit. With a good workout in a dream, you can "spend" more time than in reality, remembering seven to eight dreams per night. This makes the notorious eight hours more meaningful. However, this over-memorization can cause the brain to overload with information.
Nevertheless, keeping a dream diary will constantly motivate you to dream the most interesting and memorable dreams, so the memorization process should be approached with great enthusiasm.