Why do we forget dreams?

[cool]

All of us have many dreams every night.Why do we only remember some of them?

And what determines which ones we remember?

[DrP]

I think I saw it on a documentary once that you tend to only remember the dreams you have just as you are waking... that's why they say that if you want to remember them you should write them down as soon as you realise that you are awake and have just had a dream. I tend to remember the more lucid, reccuring ones. ones.

[CharonY]

I forgot the details, but memory formation requires a consolidation step that does not happen during the relevant sleep phases. But kick in if you wake up and actively recall your dream, which forms new memories. A connected but related hypothesis is based on the fact that the sleep phases are, in a complex manner, connected to memory consolidation in general and dreams are the consequence of these processes. Hence, the typical process of remembering things during regular experience (which is also multi-step and can be disrupted) does not occur as we do not experience dreams per se.

Therefore, they are not committed to short- or long term memory and therefore fade rapidly.

[iNow]

Indeed. It's part of long-term potentiation which is happening during sleep itself to consolidate the memories and experiences of the previous day. The LT potentiation process may even be part of what is happening when you dream, which seems to be your more conscious parts of the brain trying to make sense of all of the activity taking place throughout the other parts.

[Cubbly]

It is solely you that will choose and select what to remember and discard

[pavelcherepan]

It is solely you that will choose and select what to remember and discard

 

I highly doubt that that's the case. Personally, I didn't chose to forget my dreams and, yet, I can't remember a single one. I think posters above gave much better explanations.

[jamieoverton727]

WE FORGET almost all dreams soon after waking up. Our forgetfulness is generally attributed to neurochemical conditions in the brain that occur during REM sleep, a phase of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and dreaming. But that may not be the whole story.

[DrP]

fyi - Dream I had, forgot, then remembered after a trigger this week:-

 

I bought a second hand toy air hockey game for my nephew at the weekend. The puck was missing, but I thought I'd keep an eye out for something that would replace it and a number of small disk like objects went through my mind. The other night I had a dream that I had found some small disks laying around made of various materials and I was picking them all up to test out as the puck..... I completely forgot about that dream, lol. Today I saw a metal disk on the floor, it looked too heavy for my puck, but I was instantly reminded of the dream - most of it came flooding back to me, even down to when it started to fall apart and not make sense anymore. lol.