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Research has shown that people who wake up during REM sleep report more vivid, detailed dreams, whereas people who wake up during non-REM sleep report fewer dreams, no dreams or dreams of little significance.ĭream meanings are mostly speculation, but what matters is how your dreams relate to your own life. It's likely that it's more common to forget dreams than it is to remember them, Kryger says. Unless you write it down or repeat it in your head over and over, there's a good chance you'll forget the dream. But the catch is that the memory only lasts for a short time. Meir Kryger, a sleep medicine doctor at Yale Medicine, tells CNET that most people remember their dreams when they're awakened in the middle of a dream, or in the first few moments after a dream has ended. Part of this is biological, Kuras says, as neurotransmitters forming memory are less active during sleep, and dream forgetfulness also appears to be related to the level of electrical activity in the brain during dreams.Īdditionally, it could have something to do with the content of your dreams, Kuras says: Early psychoanalytic theory suggested that difficult or traumatic information in dreams is suppressed, and the dreamer is less likely to retrieve or analyze it.ĭr. If you're one of those people who "doesn't dream," you probably just forget them. One concept that's generally accepted is that dreaming is a highly emotional process, because the amygdala (an emotional center in your brain) is one of the areas of your brain that's most active during dreams, according to neuroimaging studies. But people without PTSD have nightmares, too, so it can't be said that nightmares always accompany psychological conditions. For example, researchers know that people with post-traumatic stress disorder are likely to have nightmares. While scientists know a great deal about what happens physiologically when people dream, there's still much to be studied about what happens psychologically. "They appear to assist in memory formation, integration, problem-solving and consolidation of ideas both about ourselves and the world," he says, adding that neuroscientists have discovered that dreams help with information processing and mood regulation, too. There are many theories of the function of dreams, Kuras says. Dreams may serve multiple purposes, including memory formation.
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