Thread: Evolution of Dreams...why do we remember?

He (and the text) basically said that conscious dreaming decreases the value of sleep. Apparently people who have higher dream recall frequency or more lucid dreams have more difficulty learning new tasks etc.

I don't really see how that works out to be honest :/

Would you mind explaining what he said to back up this idea?

He (and the text) basically said that conscious dreaming decreases the value of sleep. Apparently people who have higher dream recall frequency or more lucid dreams have more difficulty learning new tasks etc.

I strongly disagree with that. I for one am a natural lucid dreamer and scored a perfect score on the memory section of an IQ test I did as a kid.

Also the only person I know in real life who can lucid dream (and he too does it naturally) is a very fast learner.

I would also like to add that whenever I have a long and vivid lucid dream, when I wake up I feel a lot more refreshed than usual.

^^^
I agree too with the above.

I am a natural lucid dreamer. I have impeccable recall, and i "learn" rapidly also. I can grasp concepts much faster than most people.

I agree that I too feel very refreshed when I have a nice LD. Here is the basis of the 'learning' argument.

Studies have been done showing that people who are deprived of REM sleep have difficulty learning a task (task is given the day before then re-tested the next day)
My prof said (I haven't checked it out) that the same study has been done on those who are lucid or have a greater dream recall frequency and they too do less well on a learned task....probably not as bad as deprived REM subjects.
I hope this clears up the argument. Maybe I could do a research project on this topic, but back to my question...Why would we remember dreams if it devalues the mechanism of sleep?

I'm going to try to find more information on the study...please keep the questions coming.

quick research revealed:

2 studies are reported which yielded no support for an hypothesized correlation between amount of dream recall and short-term memory for verbally or visually encoded material

basically meaning that those with greater recall don't necessarily have better short-term memory

I'm still searching for relevant material on dream recall and learning. I'll ask my prof about it.

After 36 years of lding I have absolutely no trouble with learning new tasks which I do quite often due to the nature of my profession.