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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Why do memories of vivid dreams disappear soon after waking up?
—Gil Greengross, via e-mail
Ernest Hartmann, professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, explains: We forget almost all dreams soon after waking up. Our forgetfulness is generally attributed to neurochemical conditions in the brain that occur during REM sleep, a phase of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and dreaming. But that may not be the whole story.
Perhaps the most compelling explanation is the absence of the hormone norepinephrine in the cerebral cortex, a brain region that plays a key role in memory, thought, language and consciousness. A study published in 2002 in the American Journal of Psychiatry supports the theory that the presence of norepinephrine enhances memory in humans, although its role in learning and recall remains controversial.
A lack of norepinephrine, however, does not completely explain why we forget dreams so easily. Recent research suggests that dreaming lies on a continuum with other forms of mental functioning, which are all characterized by activity in the cerebral cortex. On the one side of this continuum is concentrated, focused thought; dreaming and mind wandering lie on the other, with some overlap among the types. The dreaming/reverie end involves some of the most creative and “far out” material. This type of less consciously directed thinking, however, is not easy to remember. Can you recall where your mind wandered while you were brushing your teeth this morning?
In general, we are very good at forgetting nonessentials. In fact, many of our thoughts, not just those we have while dreaming, are lost. We tend to recall only things that we think about often or that have emotional significance—a problem, a date, a meeting. Mulling over important thoughts activates our dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region that facilitates memory.
Although most dreams vanish, certain ones tend to remain. These dreams were so beautiful or bizarre, they captured our attention and increased activity in our DLPFC. Thus, the more impressive your dream or thought, the more likely you are to remember it.
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14 Comments
Add CommentAlternatively, perhaps many dreams are an artifact of processes that migrates important fast-stored short term memories from the previous day into long memory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEfficient long term storage likely recalls shared snippets of previous memories to eliminate redundant storage, producing flashes of common memory themes. The use of common memory threads to store new memories may also produce changes in those common threads, altering old memories in the process and explaining why memories seem to change in time.
I'm sure there would be a huge evolutionary advantage to forgetting dreams and non-important thoughts- otherwise our brains would become so over-cluttered with nonsense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a non-sentient animal that may not fully comprehend that dreams do not represent reality, dreams may cause the animal to exhibit bizarre, life-threatening behaviour.
But what decides what kind of dreams we have, whether it's the exciting creative ones or the plain boring ones? and what is the basis behind recurring dreams?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you connect this brain chemistry information with the classical Freudian paradigm that dreams are fulfilment of unconscious desires, and so, the mind actively represses them and force its forgetfulness, to avoid that the conscious interprets the involved symbology ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tend to believe the subconscious tends to organize the factual bits of data it intakes during the course of a day (over 10,000 bits of data per second by some measures) into some rational/logical sense. Sometimes the subconscious takes and plugs random bits and pieces of information (sound, sight, smell, touch, etc) into an already forming dream, even though there is no relation to the dream story line and the random bit of data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more focused our conscious is on a subject/problem, etc, the more likely that dream story line will reveal itself in the form of a dream...it's why I sometimes go to sleep pondering a seemingly insolvable problem only to awaken with a simple solution. It is in this way some people are better able to "program" themselves to dream about a particular subject, be it a lover, anxiety, or fear...and have it manifest itself in our dream state. It is nearly impossible for someone to interpret a dream without knowing everything the subject has experienced, thought or imagined during a measurable period of time prior to the dream.
When we awaken our senses immediately begin to intake data all over again and, just like the memory of a computer, those bits of data that are not used are written over again. They don't disappear...there is simply another layer deposited only later to be pulled by the subconscious and placed in some rational and logical order.
I've been told the subconscious cannot determine the nature of abstract data...only concrete data. It is for this reason that Jack Nicholas sat over a put for such a long time before stroking the ball...he forced his subconscious mind to visualize the end result all the way from his putter to the cup.
It is also, I believe, why self talk is so important...and what and how we say things to our children when they are young...I wonder how many more people would have had successful lives had only those to whom they looked told positive reinforcing things to them when they were a child.
It occurred to me the other day how the economy may have reacted/responded differently in the early days of Mr. Obama's presidency had reinforced the good characteristics of our economy and country instead of pro-actively laying the groundwork to blame impending problems on the previous administration. I believe his over-reaction in his first days of office, "It is much worse than I expected" coupled with his inexperience with the influence of the office he held, doomed our economy to the place it is today...and where it will likely remain...
I have had many very vivid dreams,and remember a great many of them.Would someone please explain why this is?When others don't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJgrosay: First you got to be skeptical about everything Freud said. None of his hypothesis have been proved by either scientific experiments or predictions that are not contradicted, one contradiction its dead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnlike science, psychiatry has never been subject to verification. What the guru says is right if you believe otherwise you are an idiot, is the philosophy that governs this pseudo-science.
My experience as practitioner says that Freud's approach to psychopathology is right most of the times, however, it's most useful to describe the lesion and how it's produced, a forensic theory with little results when applied to therapy, but every now and then you see patients improve, for example when you tell a woman that her claustrophobia means that she may have an unconscious desire to adultery, or that agoraphobia is linked to an unconscious desire of living without working, we all have this desire, but just agoraphobics don't realize they have it. A probably wrong statement in SF dream interpretation is when he equals the dream of having a tooth pulled out to autoerotism, as the german expression for both things is similar. I met a nurse that had dreams of having a tooth extracted, and there is no connection in her language or culture between dentistry and masturbatory activity. The Freud's approach to psychotherapy must be regarded with some scepticism, even when he discovered the principle of transfer, that rules all medical activities and probably those linked to any axercise of authority, but as a working technique, Freudian paradigms at least can be taken into account. History tells that all patients Freud treated relapsed when he died, it would mean that the therapeutic bond that produces the improvemnt is lost when the image and indications of therapist dissapear, as the therapist no longer exists. Pavlovian techniques, for example those stablishing a positive conditioning between the therapeutic indications and a pleasure, for example sex, may be more strongly imprinted, but some of this techniques are hardly compatible with human dignity, see for example "A clockwork orange", the movie by Kubrick based in a novel by Burgess, or the movie by Revesz "Trip around my cranium", that points to the irreversible damages some psychotherapies may induce. Well, nobody's perfect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently taking melatonin and B6 just before retiring aid dream recall - Ihave tried it and it certainly works. Google 'B6/Dream recall research'ofr more info....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGotta wonder how this works...can someone explain? A cocktail of melatonin and B6 right before going to bed would have this affect on dream recall?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy experiences are quite different,passionate dream which are concern with your emotional trauma they fully remembered.This my habit after awaken from dream many time I write down dream.Many time I could not understand meaning of dream till note down is my mania.Another my observation is my dream pattern is always same.It may possible my childhood emotional trauma is base of my unconscious mind,neuroscience telling us that we are dancing on tune of unconscious whole life.All our life design is based on our unconscious mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChemical or Electrical?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow is memory stored in the brain? and
What is the process of reading the stored information?
Only the things I have read in Scientific American and similar publications are what I know, no way am I an expert. As I understand it, the process of thought involves a combination of chemical changes - "messengers" - and electrical pulses, but it is not clear how the information is stored for later retrieval.
From time to time over the years, I have asked this question to people who are in a position to know if an answer exists and as yet the most reassuring response is to confirm that it is a good question.
I was right with you until the end of your post where you took a science disscussion and tried to turn it into a platform for an illogical political hate rant. Then I realized that you are not at all logical and thus should be totally ignored as just another nutball.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou being so negative to what is most beautiful about human beings is just pathetic.
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