Why Some People Remember Their Dreams and Others Rarely Do?

Dreams have always held a strange fascination but scientists have so far unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding it.

It is a known fact that everyone dreams during sleep, but not everyone recalls the exciting, dangerous and at times scary things they did when they wake up and scientists aren't sure why some people remember more than others.

However, a new study suggests that there are distinct differences in brain function between people who remember their dreams and those who don't.

The research also suggests that people who are better at remembering their dreams wake up more often during the night, and respond more strongly to the sound of their own name--both when they're asleep and when they're awake.

To find out, researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) to record the electrical activity in the brains of 36 people while the participants listened to background tunes, and occasionally heard their own first name. The brain measurements were taken during wakefulness and sleep. Half of the subjects were low recallers, meaning they only remember a dream once or twice a month, and half were high recallers, meaning they remember their dreams almost every day.

When asleep, both groups showed similar changes in brain activity in response to hearing their names, which were played quietly enough not to wake them.
However, when awake, high recallers showed a more sustained decrease in a brain wave called the alpha wave when they heard their names, compared with the low recallers.

These findings indicate that there are differences in brain functioning between people who remember their dreams and those who don't. But one isn't necessarily better than the other. One of the researchers claim it is not a good or bad functioning, it’s just a different way of processing information and that those different ways seem to facilitate--or de-facilitate--dream production or memory.