How can humans remember dreams?

According to ANSA news agency, Italian scientists have discovered how humans can remember dreams and this study has just been published in the American Journal of Neuroscience.

The research team, from universities in Rome, L'Aquila and Bologna, discovered that humans will remember dreams only when a certain type of electrical oscillation occurs in the brain. REM sleep ( fast moving sleep phase of the rapid eye movement ).

Our sleep is divided into five different sleeping stages. The four sleeping phases do not have a rapid movement of the eyeball and a sleep phase has a rapid movement of the eyeball.

" Only when the cerebral cortex is filled with slow oscillating waves called theta waves, will people remember their dreams when they are in the cortex, " said the research coordinator Luigi De Gennaro of La Sapienza University in Rome. wake up. "

According to the study, at the time of awakening, the same phenomenon occurs when we form solid memories of events that are "much more real" to us than to others. This mechanism is called "remember the event."

De Gennaro said: "When you ask someone to recall important events or situations, the presence of electrical vibrations in the frontal cortex will make the retrieval process possible. If that doesn't happen, the memory of this event will obviously be lost forever. "

The study also showed that something that has not yet been evaluated is possible, that is dreams that are formed outside the REM sleep phase. " But this mechanism is different. In short, we really do not know why we remember or forget dreams, but in the end we have identified the cause of this problem, " De Gennaro stressed. .

The findings are published only a few months after another breakthrough in research related to dreams, which was also carried out by the team of scientists. In October 2011, De Gennaro's group said it had identified brain regions that could help people remember vivid dreams.

Speaking to Human Brain Mapping , De Gennaro said that his group has identified areas of the "almond" (Amygdala) lobes and "seahorse" lobes (Hippocampus) that are linked to dream dreams. strange and lively that people often remember.

At that time, Mr. De Gennaro said: " We think we have deciphered why some people never remember their dreams, while others remember in detail their dreams. dream like the movie. "

In this study, Italian scientists used the latest neuro-imaging techniques to analyze deep microstructures in the two important brain regions mentioned above.