Do you remember what you dreamed about last night?

Everyone dreams at night, but not everyone remembers their dreams when they wake up in the morning. Many people, when they dream that their wishes have come true, will subconsciously tell themselves that they must remember this dream and remember the feeling of holding hands with Xiaohua!

But the next day: What did I dream about yesterday?

The average person will have about 5 or 6 dreams a night, some of which last for a few seconds, and some may last for 20-30 minutes. So we probably spend more than an hour dreaming every night, which is quite a high frequency. But why can't we remember our dreams?

Why do we dream?

Dreaming is not a big deal. When we are in the sleep stage, our muscles relax, energy consumption is reduced, and the brain nerve cells are also in a state of inhibition. Everyone should listen carefully and have a good rest. However, if the nerve cells in some areas are not sleepy and you start to dance late at night, your dream will begin.

Because these cells are usually strictly controlled by the cerebral cortex, once they lose control, certain fragments of memory begin to run wild and become active without restraint. At this time, they may show strange dreams that are completely different from daily life.

At this time, if your language and motor nerves are also pulled into the disco group, and these people stay up late together and talk about the most exciting things, then it will not just be a simple dream, but will also be accompanied by sleep talking or sleepwalking.

When can dreams be remembered?

Human sleep is mainly divided into two stages, rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) . These two forms of sleep alternate.

Most dreams occur during the two hours of REM sleep during a full eight hours of sleep, and people are more likely to remember their dreams if awakened during this phase.

But sometimes dreams can also occur during other stages of sleep. It's just that dreams during these times are often not as vivid or memorable. After waking up, only fragments of memories are left.

Why are dreams so easy to forget?

Although it is possible that you may have some dreams that you will never forget in your life, research shows that 50% of the content of the dream will be forgotten within 5 minutes after waking up, and 90% of the details of the dream will be lost within 15 minutes after waking up.

There have been many explanations for the theory of "dream forgetting". One of them explains the reasons why dreams are forgotten from the perspective of survival and learning.

For early humans, dreams might include fantastic scenes such as "growing wings to fly in the air and catch prey when hunting" or "being able to breathe and live freely underwater."

Although it is refreshing to be in a dream, for survival, this kind of dream has many similar scenes and memories with reality, but it is impossible to realize, so it may lead to the wrong direction in learning experience . Forgetting is still a good thing.

Another theory is that remembering dreams will only lead to more and more useless information piling up in the brain, so the brain will not deliberately mobilize the memory system to create a new folder to store what dreams are had every night.

Unless it is a dream you really want to remember, your brain will only let you remember it a little bit, and you need to review it frequently to deepen your memory in order to remember it forever. Otherwise, there are so many mysterious memories created by some naughty nerve cells that don't sleep, and your brain would rather you not feel their existence at all.

And the way we remember things in dreams is very different from when we are awake. When we are awake, our brain remembers things that have happened in a certain way, such as timeline or cause and effect.

In dreams, our thoughts are in a spiral drift, not only irrelevant, but also illogical. One second you are walking hand in hand with Xiaohua, and the next second you may be planting rice on Mars. Isn't it difficult for your brain to remember this?

So if you can't remember your dreams, it's not because there's something wrong with your memory system. You don't have to doubt your little brain. It's normal to have more dreams or fewer dreams.

If you really come across a dream that you particularly want to remember, remember to use your subconscious mind to wake yourself up after the dream, and immediately write down all the details in a memo, so that you can easily get a dream that is fresh and hot.