While most of us remember somewhere around one or two dreams a week, some people report a subconscious experience that's more like a blank tape. Among us are people who say they never, ever dream.
Belicki (3) found in the laboratory that wakening people up in the REM sleep phase reveals that about 80% of them remember dreams, but in clinical practice young adults remember dreams upon awakening once or twice a week.
Dreaming is believed to help foster problem-solving, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation. But it is a myth that remembering your dreams is a sign of sound sleep. We dream four to five times a night, but not everyone remembers their dreams because ... they've slept through them.
People have several dreams each night, but probably forget about 95 percent of them.
“Since dreams are thought to primarily occur during REM sleep, the sleep stage when the MCH cells turn on, activation of these cells may prevent the content of a dream from being stored in the hippocampus – consequently, the dream is quickly forgotten.”
Scientists and psychologists, old and new, tell us that dreams reveal critical aspects about ourselves. Dreams are a reflection of your recent state of mind, future possibilities, and changes that you have experienced. Related Blog: Do I Really Need 8 Hours of Sleep a Night?
The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes. People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase.
In general, your brain prioritizes getting non-REM deep sleep over dreaming. “So, if you're only giving yourself four to five hours of sleep, the brain will want to do more sleeping and do less dreaming,” says Naiman.
Stress. Stress and traumatic events can lead to vivid dreams. Researchers believe that this is due to the role that dreaming plays in memory and processing emotions. People who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more likely to have bad vivid dreams than people who do not.
So, why do my dreams sometimes feel so incredibly real? It comes down to how intensely stimulated parts of the brain become during REM sleep. Coupled with the powerful emotions we're experiencing within them at the same time – creating an illusion that feels more life-like than reality itself!
If you dream about someone, it is much more likely a reflection of your own thoughts and subconscious feelings instead of an indication of how they are feeling or thinking about you. Dreams can provide insights into relationships and help you better understand your feelings.
If you suddenly remember your dreams more than usual, it might be due to fragmented REM sleep. 7 Alarm clocks notoriously interrupt REM sleep towards morning. Other causes of fragmented sleep that might cause you to remember your dreams include sleep apnea, limb movements, or snoring.
So, to answer your question, it is completely normal to remember your dreams, even the dreams you had years ago. This just means that your brain functions differently, in some aspects, better than others. You are a high-recaller, meaning you have increased alertness and consciousness of your surroundings at all times.
What Are Lucid Dreams? Lucid dreams are when you know that you're dreaming while you're asleep. You're aware that the events flashing through your brain aren't really happening. But the dream feels vivid and real. You may even be able to control how the action unfolds, as if you're directing a movie in your sleep.
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this.
Alan Eiser, a psychologist and a clinical lecturer at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, says dreams can be “highly meaningful,” because they “deal with the sort of personal conflicts and emotional struggles that people are experiencing in their daily lives.”
It is unusual for dreams to occur soon after falling asleep since the first cycle of REM sleep is usually around 90 minutes after falling asleep. They then occur at approximately 90 minute intervals during sleep and are most complex and prolonged in the later REM sleep episodes towards the end of the night.
A person experiencing sleep paralysis is mentally awake, however, while a person experiencing a false awakening wrongly believes they have just woken up, although they are still dreaming. Sleep paralysis is more likely to occur in people with poor sleep quality, insomnia symptoms, or significant stress.
Freud was convinced that dreams represent some unfulfilled desires or hoped-for wishes, while later investigators saw a more pragmatic quality to them, as reflection of waking life.
Stress dreams are distressing or anxiety-provoking dreams or nightmares that occur during your REM cycle, which is the stage of sleep when scientists think most dreaming occurs. They can be particularly vivid or recurrent.
The answers to these questions may lie in the way our memory system develops as we grow from a baby to a teenager and into early adulthood. Our brain is not fully developed when we are born—it continues to grow and change during this important period of our lives. And, as our brain develops, so does our memory.
Finally, the hippocampus, which is the region of the brain that's largely responsible for memory, isn't fully developed in the infancy period. Scientists will continue to investigate how each of these factors might contribute to why you can't remember much, if anything, about your life before the age of 2.
More directly, some studies on adults point to shared neural mechanisms between waking cognition and corresponding dream features. A general decline in the dream recall frequency is commonly reported in the elderly, and it is explained in terms of a diminished interest in dreaming and in its emotional salience.