The brain generates dreams through subjective processes, which become active when sleep isolates human consciousness from the external surroundings. During sleep, our minds produce dreams that connect unconscious mental activities to prior personal memories and present beliefs. The scientific community assumes dreams enhance learning processes, preserve memory traces, and assist with cognitive operations. The relationship between dreams and both physical and mental health is directly connected. Research suggests that neurological and psychiatric disorders cause alterations in dream patterns, which might appear prior to symptom development.
The study of dreaming and dreamless sleep states enables scientists to research basic human consciousness in isolation from external factors. Scientists determined rapid eye movement (REM) sleep as the primary stage for dreaming, as it closely resembles wakeful brain function when it was discovered during the 1950s. Modern research validates that dreams emerge within non-REM (NREM) sleep states, although they happen less frequently than during REM sleep. Different factors, including demographic aspects and personality traits, control the frequency of dream memories in individuals. A 15-day research study using self-reports along with actigraphy and EEG monitoring assessed these influences regarding dream recall.
The research involved 217 healthy Italian native speakers aged 18 to 70, who included 116 females and 101 males. A total of 204 participants completed the study, while 13 volunteers were excluded due to non-compliance. The study included only participants who had stable sleep patterns with between 6 to 8 hours of nightly sleep and showed no indications of sleep-related disorders or concerns. This study excluded participants who had substance abuse issues within the previous half-year and those who were either pregnant or actively breastfeeding.
The study consisted of three stages, including (i) screening interviews with questionnaires, (ii) monitoring sleep patterns through reports about sleep-conscious experiences during a 15-day period, and (iii) assessing participant cognitive functioning at the end of the study. Ethical approval was granted (No. 11/2020), while written informed consent received approval from participants.
Health assessment, self-reported sleep patterns, and dream characteristics were methods used for screening. The participants used voice recordings to document their morning dreams following their most recent pre-awakening experience. The researchers monitored participants’ sleep parameters through actigraphy, and they implemented electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis on a sub-sample of 50 people. The evaluation consisted of Stroop testing, Babcock Formatting, and Rey-Osterrieth Figure assessment. Principal component analysis was applied to the actigraphic dataset for dimensionality reduction. The authors inspected EEG data manually, while mixed-effect models evaluated relationships between the different phases of sleep. The analysis group classified dream reports according to the identified content within the dreams.
A total of 204 healthy Italian adults participated in the study (mean age was 35.1 years), during which 2,900 dreams were recorded the following morning. During their sleep period, 42 participants employed portable EEG monitoring.
The participants documented dreaming experiences in 72% of their sleep, while contentful dream experience (CD) and white dream (WD) occurred in 58% and 14%, and no dream experience (ND) appeared in 28% of cases. The number of reported dreams increased in verbal diary entries compared to self-reported methods. Dream recall received significant prediction from participants who held positive perspectives about dreaming together with mind wandering alongside long periods of light sleep (PC2), but demographic characteristics of age and sex failed to predict dream recall.
Male participants displayed a positive attitude toward dreaming, yet females maintained a higher attitude toward dreaming. Dream recall showed a positive correlation with long light sleep periods (PC2), as these sleep intervals produced negative effects on deep sleep (N3) duration. The analysis revealed three sleep patterns, including sleep fragmentation, stable and unstable sleep, yet only long light sleep periods demonstrated a significant effect on dream recall frequency. During REM sleep, there were indications for better dream recall, although these findings failed to reach statistical significance after applying correction methods.
Morning dream recall depends on three main variables consisting of attitudes toward dreaming, mind-wandering behavior, and sleep patterns. People who show interest in dreams are better at remembering them, but their increased awareness does not improve their ability to recall dream content. Research shows that mind wandering has a positive relationship with dream recall because both use similar neural processes in the default mode network (DMN).
The study reveals that both individual traits and physiological states influence dream recall. It finds that consistent overnight sleep patterns enhance the chances of having both vivid and vague dreams. The dream content memory is often lost due to interference from external or internal factors, and these results suggest that vague dreams reflect genuine experiences while their memories fade after waking.
References: Elce V, Bergamo D, Bontempi G, et al. The individual determinants of morning dream recall. Commun Psychol. 2025;3:25. doi:10.1038/s44271-025-00191-z
