Why You Can't Remember Dreams

Morning Sleeping Beauties!

Ah, Sleeping Beauty.

A curse-induced, enchanted sleep

Sounds fun.

I have a semi-related sleep question:

How come you can remember things from when you were 5 years old...

But if you think JUST as hard.

Like really really really hard.

You can't quite make out that epic dream you had last night, where you were a superhero riding a unicorn through space?

Like you saw it in your brain when you woke up.

Then POOF.

Gone.

Why do we forget dreams??

Let’s attack this problem from another angle.

The groin.

You’re walking down the street. Just an innocent bystander.

When you see:

You’d remember that FOREVER!

You'd be telling your friends for weeks! We can always recall the craziness of it.

But a dream?

King Kong could be swinging from your ceiling…

Your room turns into a spaceship…

You're suddenly best friends with a talking taco…

And 10 minutes after you wake up... GONE!

So here's what scientists think is happening...

Your dreams aren't actually forgotten... they're just LOST!

Think of your brain like a computer.

The dream memory gets saved on the hard drive:

But when you wake up, you've lost the IP address!

The memory is available, it's there... but it's not accessible!

Which is why 2 days later...

This happens because of a stress chemical called…

When you're in dream sleep, it plummets to zero.

But this other chemical - acetylcholine - does the exact opposite. It spikes!

This chemical switch basically flips your brain's input-output mode.

So during dreams, your brain is set to OUTPUT mode - creating wild experiences.

But NOT to INPUT mode - actually saving those memories!

So basically, your brain becomes a movie theater that forgot to press record.

The show was amazing... but there's no footage.

Sorry cutie.

Btw, we made a whole video on why we dream, watch it here 👇

Stay Cute,

Henry & Dylan 🌈

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