Why some people remember dreams and others do not

"I never dream" is almost always "I never remember." Sleep-lab awakenings produce dream reports from people who are certain they do not dream.

So the interesting question is what separates frequent recallers from rare ones.

What the research finds

• Frequent recallers wake more during the night, and for longer. A brief awakening at the end of a REM period is what gives a dream the chance to be encoded at all.
• They differ in resting brain activity, measured while awake, particularly in regions associated with attention and with responding to external stimuli. The difference is not confined to sleep.
• They report more interest in dreams, though this is circular enough to be nearly useless as an explanation.

What this means practically

The good news is that recall is the most trainable part of this whole subject. The seven-day programme exists because recall responds to a few unglamorous changes faster than almost anything else on this site.

The less good news: if you have a hard, early alarm and get up immediately, you are working against the single largest factor. The alarm interrupts the longest REM period of the night and then removes the quiet moments in which a dream memory would consolidate.

What it does not mean

Rare recall is not a sign of anything wrong, and frequent recall is not a sign of a richer inner life. It is largely a difference in memory conditions, not in dreaming.