Why Do Some People Always Remember Their Dreams, While Others Almost Never Do?

Much of dreaming remains a mystery, but scientists have some ideas as to why some people are better than others at remembering their dreams. Soaring with the birds. Teeth falling out. A crazy psychopath is chasing you. For many of us, our dreams transport us to a surreal world where logic and reason have no reign. Some of us may even look forward to sleep – and the adventures we’ll go on in our dreams. But does everyone take a nightly trip to dreamland? While most of us remember somewhere around one or two dreams a week, some people report a subconscious experience that’s more like a blank tape. Among us are people who say they never, ever dream. A small subset of the population – around one in every 250 people – report never remembering a single dream in their lives, as a 2015 study found. What is it about people who don’t remember their dreams that sets them apart from the people that do? Is it possible for the brain to stop producing dreams? And could something be wrong in the brains of people who report never dreaming? Raphael Vallat, a neuroscientist specializing in sleep and dream research at the University of California, Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, offered insights to a number of these questions. Vallat says dreaming “is one of the last frontiers in our understanding of the human mind.” And learning about dream recall – the why and how of remembering one’s dreams – may help scientists solve some of the mysteries of the dreaming mind. Work by Vallat and others in the field has uncovered a number of interesting tidbits that seem to separate the dreamers from the so-called nondreamers, or the people seldom or never remember their dreams. Is Dreaming a Universal […]

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