What affects the memory of dreams: scientists have named the key factors

The study showed that the ability to remember dreams depends on the season, sleep structure and age of a person
The ability to remember dreams depends on the season, sleep structure, age and a person’s attitude to dreams.

Italian psychologists from the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca conducted a study to understand why some people remember their dreams well, while others almost never do, reports BILD.

They involved 204 volunteers aged 18 to 70 and analyzed what factors affect the ability to remember dreams.

For 15 days, the participants recorded on a voice recorder every morning whether they had dreams and what exactly they remembered. The quality of their sleep was also assessed. In 42 volunteers, the electrical activity of the brain was additionally recorded using EEG to determine in which phase of sleep the dreams occurred.

Before and after the experiment, participants took tests on their health, cognitive abilities, and personality traits.

The researchers found several important factors that affect dream memory:

Time of year: People remembered their dreams best in the spring and fall, and worst in the winter.

Age: Older people were less likely to recall details of their dreams, even though they felt they had dreamed something. This phenomenon was called “white dreams,” when the impression of a dream disappears immediately after waking up.

Sleep stages: Longer sleep with frequent REM phases contributed to dream memory, while short and deep sleep did the opposite.

Attitude to dreams: Those who had a positive attitude towards dreams and often dreamed during the day remembered their dreams better.

Interestingly, a person’s gender did not affect the ability to remember dreams, although it was previously believed that women were more likely to remember their dreams.

Scientists believe that dream memory is not a random phenomenon, but a complex process involving neural networks in the brain. They plan to continue their research to better understand the mechanisms of dream memory formation and storage.

Earlier, it was reported that scientists discovered that the melatonin receptor MT1 is a key regulator of the REM sleep phase.