Health And Medicine

Why Some People Remember Their Dreams While Others Forget

Have you observed how some people can remember their dreams so well after waking up almost every morning while for others remembering a dream is a rare incident.

Why Some People Remember Their Dreams While Others Forget

Have you observed how some people can remember their dreams so well after waking up almost every morning while for others remembering a dream is a rare incident. Based on how frequently people can recall their dreams, scientists divide them in two categories; people who remember dreams regularly or ‘high dream recallers’ and people who rarely remember the dreams or ‘low dream recallers’. Now why is that difference?

Few months ago a research came out that showed that high dream recallers have twice as many time of wakefulness during sleep and their brains respond more to Auditory Stimuli both during sleep and wakefulness. The period of wakefulness enables them to memorize the dreams better.

To show why does that happen researchers at INSERM, France classified people into two groups. A group of 21 People who could recall dreams with an average of 5.2 mornings per week and a group comprising of 20 people who could on average recall 2 dreams a month. Scientists used Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to measure the spontaneous brain activity of the subjects, during wakefulness and sleep.

The high dream recallers, both while they were asleep and awake, showed stronger brain activity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) and in Temporo-perietal Junction (TPJ). This area of brain is involved in attention orienting towards external stimuli. This also explains the earlier research that concluded that the lesions in these two parts of the brain causes a person to altogether cease dream recalling.

To memorize something, the brain must be awake and in high dream recallers stronger activity of brain that causes them to react to external stimuli and wake up many times for a brief period during sleep, enables them to remember their dreams more efficiently while a brain with less activity in those parts, which cannot react to stimuli will not be able to memorize any dreams.

That is the difference in high and low dream recallers, but there might also be another reason that high dream recallers possibly produce more dreams than low dream recallers. Further research is needed to prove if that is true but at least now you know why you can or cannot remember your dreams. [ INSERM ; Image via art2work]



  1. Great read. I am one who can recall most or what I think is most of my dreams. A sleep study showed I do not go into stage 3 and 4 REM sleep which is why I am so tied all the time. So I guess it makes me more hyper aware of my dreams.

  2. I am with gpcox, sometimes I can’t forget a dream and it bothers me all day. Other times I can’t hang onto one I really want to. I learned that if you can write down your dream without turning over, or turning on a light, you are much more able to remember it. This has helped me a lot because I am fascinated by my super intense dreams.

  3. I can sometimes force a dream to fade away if it was a rough one, but if I think about a dream in the morning, it will stay with me awhile. There was one dream I had 6 months after my grandmother died, I was 8, and I still remember it today.

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  5. Fascinating!! I seem to remember my dreams in the morning but have forgotten them by the afternoon. Should start writing them down… Very interesting post though.

  6. Not a trait that is static though, dream recalling can increase with intent/effort/practise just as low dream recalling can be induced (helpful for those who are still tired after sleeping or have bad dreams) can with certain breathing/exercise techniques. That said, if you’re surrounded by frequencies from electronics it can be hard to tell what you’re going to dream and how much anyway since all the low-not-necessarily-consciously-heard-sounds are clashing.

  7. Love your blog so many interesting articles here I re-blogged..hope they read also

  8. Interesting post. I remember almost all my dreams, glad there is some science involved …. Wonder how science would explain the randomness of those dreams…. All my dreams are so random – jumping from one scene to another without continuity and connection.

    1. Yeah.That’s an interesting observation and science behind it will be even more interesting, let’s see what scientists say about that. 😀

      Thank you for giving Sparkonit your time, really appreciate it! 😀

  9. I seldom remember them. One or two a month is common. Some I do remember, and try to recall to tell someone, they evaporate like drops on water on a hot pan. Frustrating.

    Interesting post.

    1. Yep, that’s frustrating. Anyway, if you really wanna tell someone about a dream (for whatever reason),you can always make it up. Thanks for the comment. 😀

  10. I tend to remember my dreams very vividly and I am super sensitive to outside stimulit so this makes total sense to me. I need absolutely no light, and either no noise or white noise so that I can fall asleep. I’ve even woken up to rustling outside my window. I jumped out of bed wide awake, thinking it might be someone trying to break in!

      1. Well, nothing can be done about that. Just the way my body was made. My grandmother and mother are the exact same way. I remember how my grandmother could hear us sneaking into cupboards looking for candy while she was sleeping upstairs.

  11. Thanks for the post. I have always found that my dreams are much more vivid and memorable when daylight is in the room while I sleep. Through 3/4 of the year I wake while it is still dark, but a Saturday morning in June will guarantee a dream that I will tell everyone about all day. My theory is that the light coming through my eyelids is making it’s way into the dream, mixing a little color and reality in with the crazy.

  12. Have a sense that there is more to dream recall than auditory stimuli. I have kept a dream journal (of myself), because I interpret the dreams of my clients. I know that dreams can be gone with the wind – sometimes as fast as a few minutes if I don’t record on paper immediately after waking up (really immediately – there’s a notepad next to my bed and i write it down even before getting out of bed:) ). It’s a very interesting subject!

  13. I think it is the case that when people start writing down such dreams as they remember, then they gradually start remembering more dreams – or possibly start dreaming more which would give rise to the same impression.

  14. If I get up after waking during a dream, I remember the dream. If not, then I just remember that I did dream but not so much what it was about. Some fearful dreams keep me awake longer, therefore for me, I am awake longer trying to calm down and thus am more likely to remember details.

  15. Fascinating – I keep a pad by my bed because there are so many blog-worthy dreams, but if I don’t jot them down at first light they become lost in the black hole.

  16. Dreams are a big part of my life, and my husbands. We discuss them over breakfast. So lucky!! Loved your article, though I think there might be more to it!

      1. And whyever not? – as we all three know, it is not really possible to declare anything much as a certainty regarding dreams. 🙂

  17. I remember my dreams very clearly and I do wake up a lot during the night. These days it’s mainly due to a painful hip but perhaps I ought to be thankful for hip pain increasing my dreaming episodes!

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