Thread: Why don't we remember our dreams?

Why don't we remember our dreams very easily? Do they not get stored in short-term memory?

They become very easy to remember once you reach the level of natural lucidity. Your level of consciousness in the dream should match your waking level as far as memory retention is concerned.

Asking this question is like asking: why don't we remember every thought that goes on through our brain?
Simply that is what dreaming is, a brain process of thinking while the human body is in a non active state. We cannot remember every little thought that goes through our head each day, infact we remember hardly any of them; mainly the reason is our brain only stores memory in that which we find to be important for our certain lives. Lets face it most of our dreams have no paticular meaning to our day to day lives so our brain doesn't take the time storing dream thoughts away in the memory.

The average short term memory for an individual is a mear four to five seconds. That is if the person is given the information and then distracted. So to not give any lable or mentally attach anything to it so they can remember it.
So that is when you are awake!
When you are asleep the region of the brain that is responsible for short term memory is shut down. Making recall that much harder.
So I am not so sure it is not our subconscious plotting against us. However our brains function that way for a reason. And you have to ask yourself what is that reason?????

I don't think information is really retained from our subconscious thoughts, if it is we have a very difficult time getting to it.

Maybe it is selective. After all, who would want to remember mere "mumbo jumbo" over a devine sexual encounter.

I think that dreams just go over thinks you where thinking that day, and they just solve the problems and stuff, and then get thrown in a trash can in the back of your mind, and if you try hard enough, you can catch the paper with the dream written on it and read it before the teacher(subconciousness or however you spell it) takes it and throws it away.

Actually, I think we do remember quite a bit more of our dreams than we think -- its just that the memories are usually stored in different tracts in your brain than waking memories. It's basically state-dependant learning. For example, if you learn something when you are drunk, then you are most likely to remember it when you are drunk. The reason that you recover dream memories during sleep and awake memories during waking is because these two states of consciousness are so different from each other. But with lucid dreaming, these states of consciousness become more similar over time, and these different memory tracts might eventually converge a bit.

I have great dream recall. I always remember quite a bit of my dreams. I'm sure there aresome parts I forget, but I never have trouble remembering the main idea, plot, characters and setting of a dream. I guess since I 've always been interested in dreams, it was always important to remember the dreams.

[quote]
When you are asleep you region of the brain that is responsible for short term memory is shut down. Making recall that much harder.
So I am not so sure it is our subconscious plotting against us. However our brains function that way for a reason. And you have to ask yourself what is that reason?????

It sure is a mystery