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Deep inside the temporal lobe of the brain, the hippocampus has a central role in our ability to remember, imagine and dream.

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If last night you dreamt about a plane crash and today you had plans to board a plane, would you change your flight?

According to research by Carey Morewedge, an associate professor of marketing at Boston University, you'd be more likely to do so than had the government raised the national threat level to orange, indicating "high risk" for a terrorist attack. You'd also be just as anxious about your travel plans as you would be if a real plane had taken a nose dive on your intended route, the 2009 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found.

"People have this belief that dreams reveal more meaningful or special information than similar waking thoughts," Morewedge says. Therefore, we sometimes make more proactive decisions based on dreams than we would based on reality.

In some cultures, what happens in a dream doesn't stay in a dream, says Tore Nielsen, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal, where he directs the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory. "That's a phenomenon that has cropped up in different cultures: the idea that what happens in a dream is somehow real," he says. "So if you dream that someone stole something from you, you have the right to accuse that person of being a thief."

While not all of us would go so far as to take legal action against a "criminal" in our minds, it's not uncommon to interpret dreams as messages from God or another spiritual or religious figure, Nielsen says. And many of us can relate to waking up with a pit in the stomach after dreaming about a partner cheating or feeling a sense of panic after dreaming about sleeping through an exam. Simply knowing "it's just a dream" doesn't always shake the feeling, since it's human nature to believe something first and evaluate its truth value second, Morewedge says. When you're dreaming, "you're constantly suspended in belief," he says. Even if you forget a bad dream, sometimes "the feeling will linger in the morning," Nielsen adds.

On the bright side, happy dreams can influence your mood in the daytime too. "There are so many dreams that are stimulating and exciting," such as lucid dreams - when you are aware you're dreaming - and sexual dreams, Nielsen says. "Those [feelings] as well can linger into the day."

Why do we dream? "One way of thinking about dreams is that they're part of the same problem-solving processes that we use during the day time," says Gregory White, a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at National University in Redding, California. "It's just that they don't speak in languages; they speak in images."

Whether your brain is sorting out a dispute with your boss, finding a way to cope with caring for an ailing parent or looking for a solution to a draining bank account, dreams are unpleasant more often than not, White says. "Dreams are about problem-solving, so no wonder they're distressing," he says. "Your mind is hopefully working on a solution to a distressing problem."

While finding a solution can take time and effort (often aided by the help of a therapist), when your dreams improve, your real life might, too.

"If you take a look at those people who have had [an improvement in] their dreams ... and you look at their mood the next day, they're much better off," White says. But if their dreams remain dismal or become gloomier, "they feel badly - they feel depressed or angry."

Of course, the cycle between dreams and mood is a two-way street. More understood than how our dreams affect our moods is how our days affect our dreams. It's called "day residue," White says. "It's been really clear that what happens to one emotionally, particularly during the night, can affect dream content," he says. "If you're really distressed, you're more likely to have distressing dreams."

While that's normal, consistently upsetting dreams - particularly nightmares - are often linked to mental health problems, such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and even a higher risk of suicide, Nielsen's research has shown.

Fortunately, there are effective treatments for nightmares. Psychologists may work with sufferers on techniques like rehearsing the bad dream with a different, more positive ending. After several weeks, that script starts to enter the dream, the nightmares begin to resolve and the accompanying mental health conditions may improve, too, Nielsen says.

"You can treat the nightmare and the anxiety will get better as well," he says. "Probably the best approach would be treat the nightmares and treat the anxiety disorders simultaneously."

If your dreams aren't that dreadful, but have left you with a feeling you'd like to shake, simply try a classic relaxation exercise: deep breathing, White suggests. While holding onto the memory of the bad dream​, take a deep breath and then breathe out very slowly "so that you decondition" the anxious feeling you've associated with it, he explains. It might also help to get out of bed quickly, since movement tends to disrupt the ability to remember dreams, White says.

Still feeling distressed? It may be time to seek help. "For anything that's consistent or very troubling and you're not getting far from it," White says, "go see a therapist​."

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If last night you dreamt about a plane crash and today you had plans to board a plane, would you change your flight? According to research by Carey Morewedge, an associate professor of marketing at Boston University, you'd be more likely to do so than had the government raised the national threat level to orange, indicating "high risk" for a terrorist attack.

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Dreams may not be so sweet if they are impacting your quality of sleep. We all dream each night, whether the dreams are remembered or not. Many Americans are chronically sleep-deprived. It's important to have an understanding of ideal sleep and how our sleeping patterns may impact overall health and wellness.
How Dreams Work
Everyone dreams anywhere from 3 to 6 times each night. Dreaming is normal and a healthy part of sleeping. Dreams are a series of images, stories, emotions and feelings that occur throughout the stages of sleep. The dreams that you remember happen during the REM cycle of sleep. REM means rapid eye movement. The REM sleep happens approximately 90 minutes after you have fallen asleep and lasts around ten minutes. The brain is very active at this point and that is when the more memorable dreams happen.

It seems that often, dreams occur as a way for us to play out events that happened during the day. They seem to be a response to an experienced environment. If one has something stressful or particularly sad happen to them during the day, they are more likely to dream about it at night. There are now some that suggest dreaming helps the brain with its memory function. They help with cognition and your ability to process events - "...dreaming is a natural extension of waking conscious experience. 1 "

There are many theories about what we dream and why. Whatever the case, what should be of particular importance to an individual is not necessarily what they dream about but how it impacts sleep quality.
The Impact of Dreams
While dreaming is normal, there can be some abnormal parts of dreaming that interfere with sleep or overall mental health. For example, if you experience vivid dreams immediately after you have fallen asleep, it could be a sign of a sleep condition called narcolepsy .

Dreams do not typically negatively impact sleep, but nightmares can. The way they influence sleep is that it can make it more difficult to fall asleep and cause difficulty in moving between sleep cycles. 2 This can make a person drowsier during the day.

On Daily Life

Good and bad dreams can impact daily life. Frequent nightmares may impede a person's ability to fall asleep and then cause sleepiness during the day. Dreaming can also aid in a person's ability to process others' positive emotions, making the individual have a higher level of social competence .

Not dreaming may mean you are not reaching REM sleep and therefore may cause higher rates of sleepiness, depression and health issues. It seems to be that those who have negative dreams also have higher rates of stress during the day and are more likely to have sleep disorders. Likewise, those who have positive dreams are less likely to have sleep disorders. Though, it's difficult to know the cause. Regardless, trying to think positively during the day may help the types of positive or negative dreams that occur at night. 3 .
Night Terrors and Nightmares
Night terrors and nightmares are two different types of dreams. Night terrors show up as someone thrashing or groaning in the middle of their sleep due to a negative dream and are associated with non-REM sleep. It typically occurs in children. They do not wake up due to the night terror, although it may last 10-30 minutes. Nightmares are a negative type of dream that causes one to wake abruptly and is associated with the REM sleep cycle. It can happen to anyone of any age. Sleep deprivation can cause an increase in nightmares .

There are many different things that can factor into the quality of your sleep, so feel free to to ASMS if you're curious about how you can improve your sleep quality today!

1. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/tps-0000018.pdf

2. Paul, F., Schredl, M., & Alpers, G. W. (2015). Nightmares affect the experience of sleep quality but not sleep architecture: an ambulatory polysomnographic study. Borderline personality disorder and emotion dysregulation, 2, 3. doi:10.1186/s40479-014-0023-4

3. Weinstein, N., Campbell, R., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2018). Linking psychological need experiences to daily and recurring dreams. Motivation and emotion, 42(1), 50-63. doi:10.1007/s11031-017-9656-0

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Dreams may not be so sweet if they are impacting your quality of sleep. We all dream each night, whether the dreams are remembered or not. Many Americans are chronically sleep-deprived. It's important to have an understanding of ideal sleep and how our sleeping patterns may impact overall health and

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dream, mental activity associated with the rapid-eye-movement (REM) period of sleep. It is commonly made up of a number of visual images, scenes or thoughts expressed in terms of seeing rather than in those of the other senses or in words. Electroencephalograph studies, measuring the electrical activity of the brain during REM sleep, have shown that young adults dream for 11⁄2 to 2 hours of every 8-hour period of sleep. Infants spend an average of 50% of their sleep in the REM phase (they are believed to dream more often than adults) a figure which decreases steadily with age. During dreams, blood pressure and heart rate increase, and breathing is quickened, but the body is otherwise immobile. Studies have shown that sleepers deprived of dream-sleep are likely to become irritable and lose coordination skills. Unusually frightening dreams are called nightmares, and daydreams are constructed fantasies that occur while the individual is awake. Studies have demonstrated the existence of lucid dreaming, where the individual is aware that he is dreaming and has a degree of control over his dream.

Sigmund Freud , in his pioneering work The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, tr. 1913), was one of the first to emphasize dreams as keys to the unconscious. He distinguished the manifest content of dreams-the dream as it is recalled by the individual-from the latent content or the meaning of the dream, which Freud saw in terms of wish fulfillment. C. G. Jung held that dreams function to reveal the unconscious mind, anticipate future events, and give expression to neglected areas of the dreamer's personality. Another theory, which PET scan studies appear to support, suggests that dreams are a result of electrical energy that stimulates memories located in various regions of the brain.

See J. A. Hobson, The Dreaming Brain (1988); M.-L. von Franz, Dreams (1991).

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Article Reading Levels Level 5 Document controls Citation metadata dream, mental activity associated with the rapid-eye-movement (REM) period of sleep. It is commonly made up of a number of visual images, scenes or thoughts expressed in terms of seeing rather than in those of the other senses or in words.

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Abstract

We explore the application of a wide range of sensory stimulation technologies to the area of sleep and dream engineering. We begin by emphasizing the causal role of the body in dream generation, and describe a circuitry between the sleeping body and the dreaming mind. We suggest that nearly any sensory stimuli has potential for modulating experience in sleep. Considering other areas that might afford tools for engineering sensory content in simulated worlds, we turn to Virtual Reality (VR). We outline a collection of relevant VR technologies, including devices engineered to stimulate haptic, temperature, vestibular, olfactory, and auditory sensations. We believe these technologies, which have been developed for high mobility and low cost, can be translated to the field of dream engineering. We close by discussing possible future directions in this field and the ethics of a world in which targeted dream direction and sleep manipulation are feasible.

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Dream engineering: Simulating worlds through sensory stimulation

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We explore the application of a wide range of sensory stimulation technologies to the area of sleep and dream engineering. We begin by emphasizing the causal role of the body in dream generation, and describe a circuitry between the sleeping body and the dreaming mind.

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A lucid dream occurs when a person is asleep but aware that they are dreaming. In this state, a person can take control of their dream's narrative to some degree, essentially guiding and directing the course of their dream.

Because this type of sleep is associated with awareness and the reflection of this awareness, it is often associated with what is known as metacognition. Metacognition involves the awareness and understanding of your own thought processes.

Research suggests that lucid dreaming and metacognitive functions share similar neural systems. This means that people with heightened abilities to monitor their own thoughts may be more likely to experience lucid dreams.

How to Experience a Lucid Dream

You can do a few things to help increase your chances of experiencing a lucid dream:

Get more REM sleep: The best way to get more REM sleep is to increase the amount of quality sleep that you get each night. Improve your sleep habits by following a consistent sleep schedule, avoiding electronics before bed, skipping heavy meals and caffeine later in the day, and maintaining a comfortable sleep environment.

Keep a dream diary: Some people report that maintaining a dream diary makes it more likely that they will experience lucid dreams. The act of focusing more on dreams may help you become more aware of the experience when it happens.

Use mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD): In this technique, you tell yourself repeatedly that you will dream and that you will be aware that you are dreaming. The technique relies on a form of memory known as prospective memory, or the ability to remember future events, to activate a lucid dream state.

Practice reality testing: This process involves doing checks while awake and asleep to determine if one is dreaming. For example, you might try pressing your finger against a wall to see if you are dreaming. If you are not, the solid wall would stop your finger. In a dream, however, your finger might simply pass through the wall. Getting used to doing reality testing while awake may help make it easier to do it while you are asleep.

History of Lucid Dreaming

Awareness of dream states during a dream played a role in Eastern religious traditions including Buddhism. The first written record of a lucid dream was described by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. In his work On Dreams, he described reaching a state of awareness of his dreaming state.﻿﻿

While the phenomenon was first observed and described thousands of years ago, it was not until the nineteenth century that scientists began to take a more formal look at lucid dreaming. Not until the last few decades have researchers utilized objective scientific methods to actually study what happens during a lucid dream.

Research during the 1960s and 1970s led to the discovery that lucid dreams were associated with REM sleep and the creation of the electrooculogram (EOG) that could be used to detect a pre-determined set of eye movements in order to signal awareness.

The development of technology such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) and other tools that allow researchers to look more closely at what is happening inside the brain during sleep has led to increased research on changes in brain activity during lucid dreaming.

How to Know If Your Dream Is Lucid

During most non-lucid dreams, people are not aware of the fact that they are dreaming. A common characteristic of these dreams is that even when truly strange things happen within the dream, it seems real. It is only after people wake that they realize that it was only a dream.

When having a lucid dream, however, there is a recognition that what is happening is not real and that it is taking place within a dream. This often allows the dreamer to exert some degree of control over what is happening.

How do you know if you have had a lucid dream? Some signs that you might have had this experience in the past:

You were aware that you were asleep and dreaming.

Your dream was very vivid.

You were able to exert some degree of control over the events or scenery in your dream.

Your emotions were very intense.

Prevalence of Lucid Dreaming

How many people have lucid dreams? How frequently do they experience them? Research suggests that the spontaneous experience of lucid dreaming tends to be fairly infrequent, but many people report having them at least once. Experiencing lucid dreams on a frequent basis, however, appears to be fairly uncommon.

Approximately half of all people will have at least one lucid dream during their lifetime.

Around 23% of people have one lucid dream per month.﻿﻿

However, only 11% of people report having two or more lucid dreams over the course of a month.﻿﻿

The results of one study suggested that lucid dreaming tends to be more common in women and may decrease in frequency as people age.﻿﻿

Uses of Lucid Dreaming

Because lucid dreaming is such a vivid experience, it appeals to those who want to explore their inner dream world with greater awareness. The idea of lucid dreaming is so intriguing to people because, as some researchers suggest, it is "the ultimate form of immersive experience."

"[Lucid dreaming] offers a (free) unique and fantastic world in which everything may become possible or controllable and feels real without putting the dreamer at risk," suggest researchers in an article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. This combination of fantastic sensory and emotional experiences, they suggest, is what makes lucid dreaming so highly desirable.﻿﻿

Aside from the novelty of the experience, could lucid dreaming have any practical applications? While this is an area where further research is needed, it may have some possible uses. Some potential benefits are listed below.

Enhanced Creativity

Because lucid dreaming allows the dreamer to invent or create anything within the dream, it could be an exciting way to explore creatively and safely within the confines of a dream.

Because the dreamer has some degree of control over the characters, scenery, and events of the dream, it could be a way to experience and explore things that a person might not be able to do in everyday life.

Fewer Nightmares

Some researchers believe that lucid dreaming might have some therapeutic effects, particularly for addressing nightmares. Bad dreams can interrupt sleep and can play a role in reducing the quantity and quality of sleep.

Lucid dreaming could allow people to take control of their dreams and either prevent nightmares from happening or redirect the events of the dream toward something more pleasant or relaxing.﻿﻿

Less Anxiety

Some suggest that lucid dreams might be useful for reducing symptoms of anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).﻿﻿ Because the dream allows people to explore situations with a degree of control, they could do things like practice doing things that normally give them anxiety or learning to relax in situations that would normally cause them stress if they were to experience it in the real world.

Other Applications

Such findings suggest that lucid dreaming may have a number of different uses. Further research is needed to explore whether people can learn to lucid dream and the possible effects that the dream state may actually have.

Research on Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreaming can be difficult to study. Because it is uncommon, it is difficult to find participants who are able to experience this type of dreaming in a lab setting.﻿﻿

How exactly do researchers study lucid dreaming? During REM sleep, people who are experiencing a lucid dream maintain the same brain activity and muscle paralysis that are hallmarks of REM sleep. However, they are able to communicate their experience of lucid dreaming through predetermined eye movements that can be detected and monitored.

While researchers continue to find new ways to investigate the phenomenon, they still aren't sure exactly why people have lucid dreams. Research has shown, however, some ways that lucid dreaming may be unique from normal dreaming.

Other studies have found that certain areas of the prefrontal cortex appear to exhibit increased activity during lucid dreaming compared to standard REM sleep.﻿﻿ The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain associated with higher-level cognitive tasks such as decision making and memory recall.

The research shows that the anterior prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with higher levels of self-reflection, is larger in people who report having frequent lucid dreams. The researchers suggest that people who are more likely to engage in such self-reflection during normal waking life are also more readily able to take control of their dreams.﻿﻿

Potential Pitfalls of Lucid Dreaming

There are a number of factors that can play a role in whether or not you experience lucid dreaming. While lucid dreaming may have some mental health benefits, some evidence suggests that it may also have some downsides. Some things to remember:

Negative mental health impacts: Some research suggests that lucid dreaming might actually have a negative connection to mental well-being. One study found that people who have more intense lucid dreams also tend to experience increased symptoms of psychopathology. The study also suggested that the techniques used to induce lucid dreams may also have potential long-term risks, including a higher risk for sleep problems, depression, and dissociation.

Sleep interruptions: Because lucid dreams can be so vivid and emotional, they have the potential to interrupt your sleep. Also, some of the methods used to help induce lucid dreams are centered on deliberately interrupting sleep. The MILD technique, for example, is most effective if a person wakes up during the night, stays awake for approximately 30 to 120 minutes, and then falls back to sleep. Such methods may help induce lucid dreams, but they can also play a role in reducing sleep duration and quality. Poor sleep can then have a negative impact on your mental health and well-being.

You might be more likely to have bad dreams. Invoking dreams that are both vivid and emotional could potentially make it more likely that nightmares will occur.

Your personality might play a role. Some research has suggested that lucid dreaming and certain personality traits may be connected in some way. One study found that lucid dreamers tend to have a greater internal locus of control. They also score higher on measures of a need for cognition and creativity. Another study found small correlations between lucid dreaming and aspects of the Big 5 personality trait known as openness to experience.

So, although you can do things that make spontaneously experiencing a lucid dream more likely, it is impossible to guarantee that you will be able to induce the experience.

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A lucid dream occurs when a person is asleep but aware that they are dreaming. In this state, a person can take control of their dream's narrative to some degree, essentially guiding and directing the course of their dream.

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Newsela | Why are dreams wacky? Maybe to help us learn and cope

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Dreams help you work through your worries and create memories. Kids dream more than adults.

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Since I became conscious of what dreaming was at the age of 3 or 4, I've been able to remember my dreams every day, almost without exception. While some dreams fade after a day or so, I can recall many of them months or years after.

I assumed everyone could as well until my senior year of high school, when we did a dream unit in psychology class. The teacher asked us to raise our hand if we could recall our dreams every morning when we woke up. In a class of over 20 students, I was one of only two people to raise their hand. I was shocked.

Up until then, I'd gone my whole life thinking everyone else remembered their dreams too. Turns out, that's not the case for most people.

This made me begin to question, why was I able to remember my dreams while others couldn't? Was this a good or bad thing? Did it mean I wasn't sleeping well? These questions about dreaming remained years later, when I was well into my 20s. So I finally decided to investigate.

Let's start with why and when dreaming occurs. Dreaming tends to take place during REM sleep, which can occur multiple times a night. This sleep stage is characterized by rapid eye movement (what REM stands for), increased bodily movement, and faster breathing.

Mike Kisch, co-founder and CEO of Beddr, a sleep tech start-up, tells Healthline that dreaming tends to occur during this time because our brain wave activity becomes more akin to that of when we're awake. This stage usually begins about 90 minutes after you fall asleep, and can last for up to an hour toward the end of sleep.

"Whether they remember or not, all people do dream in their sleep. It is an essential function for the human brain, and also present in most species," Dr. Alex Dimitriu, double board-certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, tells Healthline. So if everyone dreams, why don't we all remember them?

That answer can vary depending on which theory of why humans dream you decide to follow, because there's quite a few. Dream research is a wide and complex field, and dreaming can be hard to study in a laboratory. This is partly because the brain activity can't tell us about the content of dreams, and you have to rely on subjective accounts from people.

"While some may suggest that dreams are a window to the subconscious, other theories posit that dreams are a nonsense result of the activity that takes place while we sleep and restore our brains," Dr. Sujay Kansagra, Mattress Firm's sleep health expert, tells Healthline. "And, if our need to dream is any indication of the brain participating in a restorative process, our inability to remember our dreams may simply be due to the sorting of essential and nonessential information during sleep."

Basically, this theory suggests that dreams occur when our brain is processing information, eliminating the unnecessary stuff and moving important short-term memories into our long-term memory. So people who recall dreams may have a difference in their ability to memorize things in general.

Beyond that, a person's brain may actually block out a dream so we don't remember it the following day. "The dream activity can be so real and intense that our brains actually hide, or mask away the dream, so [it doesn't] get lost between our waking experience, and our dream lives. Thus it is normal to forget dreams, most of the time." Dimitriu says.

Ever had one of those dreams that are so realistic you aren't sure if the events really happened? It's really unsettling and strange, right? So in this case, our brain may help us forget so that we're better able to tell the difference between our dream world and the real world.

On the flip side, brain activity can also allow someone to more easily remember their dream. "There's a region in your brain called the temporoparietal junction, which processes information and emotions. This region can also put you in a state of intra-sleep wakefulness, which, in turn, allows your brain to encode and remember dreams better," Julie Lambert, certified sleep expert, explains.

A study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology and reported by International Business Times suggested that those people who reported high dream recall had more activity in the temporoparietal junction than those who didn't recall their dreams often.

Lambert tells Healthline that if someone consistently doesn't get enough sleep, the amount of REM sleep they experience will drop, making it harder for them to remember their dreams the following day.

Even personality traits can be an indicator of whether someone will be able to remember their dreams.

Lambert continues: "Researchers also looked at the most common personality traits that are presented in people who can recall their dreams. Overall, such people are prone to daydreaming, creative thinking, and introspection. At the same time, those who are more practical and focused on what is outside themselves tend to have difficulty remembering their dreams."

This may mean that some people are naturally more likely to recall their dreams than others, despite their quality of sleep.

Other factors, like stress or experiencing a trauma, can also cause people to have vivid dreams or nightmares that they're more likely to recall the next day. For example, a person who's coping with grief after losing a loved one may dream about the death in elaborate detail. Remembering the dream the next day may affect mood and cause even more stress or anxiety.

As a writer who's constantly daydreaming and focused on introspection, this doesn't surprise me. In fact, as I've grown, the way I view my dreams, itself, has evolved. For most of my childhood, I would watch myself in third person, almost like a movie. Then, one day, I started experiencing the dreams through my own eyes, and it never reverted.

Sometimes my dreams will build on each other, even expanding on a previous event's dream in a current one. This could be a sign of my brain continuing its storytelling in my sleep.

While I was worried about my dreaming being a sign that I'm not sleeping well, it turns out dreaming itself doesn't affect sleep quality. Though being able to remember dreams can sometimes be a sign of something else, such as a health condition or medication.

"While there may be some biological differences that result in some remembering dreams more than others, there are also some medical causes that should be considered. Alarm clocks, and irregular sleep schedules can result in abrupt waking during dream or REM sleep, and thus result in recall of dreams. Sleep apnea, alcohol, or anything that disturbs sleep can also cause dream recall," Dimitriu says.

So the more you're waking up throughout the night, the easier it may be to remember your dreams, at least in the short term. "In most cases, this happens because there's something alerting that nudges us awake during dreaming, and in turn the dream content is recalled," Dimitriu says.

What about those dreams that are so intense or disturbing that they literally wake you out of your sleep? You may find yourself in a sweaty panic, your heart racing, and sitting up in bed totally confused about what just happened. Dimitriu explains that having dreams or nightmares that regularly wake you up isn't always normal and may be a sign that you need to speak to a doctor.

People who have post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) may have vivid nightmares that involve flashbacks or replays of the trauma, either directly or symbolically. These can affect sleep quality and mood the next day.

Also, excessive fatigue during the daytime may be a sign of sleep issues that require a person to seek help. If at any point your dreams, or remembering your dreams, is causing you stress or anxiety, you should consider speaking with a doctor.

While researchers still aren't sure what exactly causes dreaming, it's a relief to know that remembering your dreams is a common, healthy thing. It doesn't mean you aren't sleeping well, and it definitely doesn't mean you're crazy or "not normal."

Though I do feel more tired at times when waking up from a detailed dream, remembering them keeps things interesting - not to mention, it gives me some great story ideas. Aside from the time I dreamed about snakes for an entire week. That's a tradeoff I'll take.
Sarah Fielding is a New York City-based writer. Her writing has appeared in Bustle, Insider, Men's Health, HuffPost, Nylon, and OZY where she covers social justice, mental health, health, travel, relationships, entertainment, fashion and food.

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Why Some People Always Remember Their Dreams and Others Forget

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Since I became conscious of what dreaming was at the age of 3 or 4, I've been able to remember my dreams every day, almost without exception. While some dreams fade after a day or so, I can recall many of them months or years after.

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WHY do we remember some dreams but not others? It's because the brain mechanism that controls whether we remember or forget things when we are awake is involved.

So say Luigi De Gennaro at the University of Rome, Italy, and his team, who used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to monitor the brain activity of students as they slept. The team monitored 65 students&colon; 30 who habitually wake up while in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and 35 who usually wake in stage 2 non-REM sleep. About two-thirds of both groups recalled dreams during the study.

Those who woke during REM sleep and successfully recalled their dreams were more likely to demonstrate a pattern of EEG oscillations called theta waves in frontal and prefrontal cortex areas - the parts of the brain where our most advanced thinking occurs. "The kind of EEG oscillations and the cortical region involved are the same as those important for recalling memories in awake subjects," says De Gennaro.

In non-REM wakers, those who remembered their dreams had patterns of alpha wave activity in the right temporal lobe - involved in recognising emotional events - that resembled activity known to be key for recall while awake ( Journal of Neuroscience, DOI&colon; 10.1523/jneurosci.0412-11-2011).

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The upshot is that even when we are asleep, the same parts of our brains are on the alert for things to remember. These are often events that are emotionally charged and that the brain deems important, whether we are awake or not.

De Gennero says the results are the first evidence that the physiology by which memories are stored is the same whether we are awake or asleep. "These findings are similar to known EEG patterns in wakeful memory recollection, suggesting a continuum of cerebral processes throughout the sleep-wake cycle," says Michael Czisch, who studies sleep at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany.

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Why do we remember some dreams but not others?

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WHY do we remember some dreams but not others? It's because the brain mechanism that controls whether we remember or forget things when we are awake is involved. So say Luigi De Gennaro at the University of Rome, Italy, and his team, who used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to monitor the brain activity of students as they slept.

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Your brain could be telling you something.

How many times have you told someone, "I had the weirdest dream last night"? Probably a lot. In fact, you can have up to six dreams a night. Some of them are bound to be crazy.

Dreams are created by the part of your brain that stores memories, emotions, and thoughts. At night your brain blends what's stored in your mind with what you've been thinking about lately. The result can be wild but realistic dreams.

Dreams hardly ever become reality, but they might contain hints about what's going on in your life. " Dreams help us get in touch with our deeper feelings," dream researcher Alan Siegel says. "They can tell us a lot about ourselves and could even help us figure out problems."

Scientists have discovered that many dreams contain common themes that have meaning. Here are nine types of dreams that could tell you a lot about yourself-and what might be happening in your life.

THE THEME Being chased

SAMPLE DREAM Maybe it's a hairy, scary monster or a gigantic, shapeless blob-or both. Whatever it is, you just can't shake these guys.

WHAT IT MEANS The scary thing that's chasing you around is probably a symbol of a real-life problem you don't want to deal with. But this dream is telling you it's time to stop running from the problem and start facing it.

You'll spend about six years of your life dreaming.

Your brain waves are more active when you're dreaming than when you're awake.

THE THEME Showing up in pajamas

SAMPLE DREAM As you run onto the soccer field, you realize that instead of a uniform, you're wearing-yikes!-fuzzy footie pajamas. (Or worse ... you're naked.)

WHAT IT MEANS Your brain might be helping you recover from a real-life embarrassing moment. If no one's making a big deal about the dream pj's, chances are your friends think you're cool no matter what. If they are laughing? It could be time for some new friends!

THE THEME Not being able to move

SAMPLE DREAM An angry elephant is charging you, but it's as if your feet are superglued to the ground. You try to scream, but you have no voice.

WHAT IT MEANS You're probably feeling "stuck" in life. (Maybe your parents just grounded you.) You need to think about how you got into this sticky situation, then try to make smarter choices in the future.

A dream usually lasts from 10 to 40 minutes.

THE THEME Falling

SAMPLE DREAM You're climbing Mount Everest when you lose your grip. You fall and fall and fall ... until you gently land in a bed of daisies.

WHAT IT MEANS You might have too much going on. It's time to slow down and take a break from whatever is stressing you out. And the soft landing? It could be a sign that you'll soon get through this tough time.

KEEP TRACK OF YOUR DREAMS -CHECK OUT THE BOOK!

THE THEME Losing something

SAMPLE DREAM Your Selena Gomez concert tickets are nowhere to be found. You've torn your room apart but can't find them anywhere.

WHAT IT MEANS You might be looking for an ego boost. Perhaps you want to try out a new sport or hobby, and you're not sure if you can do it. Search deep inside yourself for that confidence. It's there-you just have to find it!

THE THEME Hanging with a celeb

SAMPLE DREAM You totally hit it off with Taylor Swift. She even asks you to play keyboard on her next single.

WHAT IT MEANS Celebrities in dreams usually represent good feelings you have about yourself. Perhaps you just aced a test or landed the lead in your school play. Things are going awesome for you-congrats!

THE THEME Flying

SAMPLE DREAM You're walking down the street when all of a sudden you start to fly.

WHAT IT MEANS It's likely you're flying high in real life as well. Maybe your friends see you as a leader, or your parents have given you more freedom.

THE THEME Being lost

SAMPLE DREAM The normal path from home to school becomes a maze of twists and turns. Where are you?

WHAT IT MEANS You're probably feeling a little lost in life. Are you facing a tough decision? You might be afraid of making the wrong choice. Think carefully about your options to find your way out of this situation.

THE THEME Being unprepared or late

SAMPLE DREAM Uh-oh! Your teacher just passed out a major test, and you don't know any of the answers. Or worse-you show up after the test is over.

WHAT IT MEANS You're worrying big-time about an upcoming event or project. If you're prepared, it's just a sign that you're nervous. That's normal. But if you've been slacking, take this dream as a hint and get to work!

Girls dream about girls and guys equally. Guys tend to dream more about other guys.

One study found that the longer you sleep, the stranger your dreams become.

CUTE KITTEN

A sleeping puppy's nose wiggles, its paws twitch, and it softly woofs-the pup must be dreaming, right?

Scientists aren't so sure. "It's one of the greatest mysteries in biology," sleep expert Marcos Frank says.

To find out, researchers looked at the brain waves of animals while asleep and awake. In one experiment, birds called zebra finches seemed to show the same brain activity while sleeping that they had while they were awake and singing. In another study, the brain patterns of snoozing lab rats appeared to be running the maze that they'd moved through earlier that day-almost as if they were practicing in their sleep. "This strongly suggests that they're dreaming about what they did while they were awake," Frank says.

But it's hard to say if animals have fantastical dreams like we do. Humans understand that they're dreaming when they wake up and remember who they are-not, say, a famous astronaut on a planet made of chocolate pudding. But Frank says that most animals might not have that kind of awareness about themselves.

Which means that you're probably dreaming if you think that elephants tap dance in their sleep.

We made up some silly dreams that these animals might be having.

ALL THE OTHER RED P ANDAS WILL BE SO JEALOUS OF MY NEW BLANKET.

WHEE! I'M SPINNING LIKE A DOLPHIN!

MMM ... BAMBOO SMOOTHIES ...

HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES! (SCORED THAT RAT ANYWAY.)

WHOA-WHAT'S UP WITH MY NEW PURPLE FUR?

I WON THE LOTTERY! FREE SALMON FOR LIFE!

GET MORE MOMENT OF SNOOZE. natgeokids.com/may

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PHOTO (COLOR): YOUNG ZEBRA FINCH

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Section: IN THIS ISSUE Your brain could be telling you something. How many times have you told someone, "I had the weirdest dream last night"? Probably a lot. In fact, you can have up to six dreams a night. Some of them are bound to be crazy.

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Newsela | Infecting our dreams: Pandemic sabotages sleep worldwide

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The coronavirus pandemic is finding its way into the dreams of people around the globe.

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how can our brain simulate what is happening in our dream if we have never done it before

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how come some dreams feel real and others dont

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how come some dreams feel real and others dont

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how does what we do in a day affect our dreams

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how does what we do in a day affect our dreams

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why do we remember some dreams and forget others