A new study by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the United States found why we forget dreams after waking up.
Some people feel angry at times when they try to remember the dreams they saw while sleeping in order to tell friends, but they can't do it even if it's only half an hour away, writer Fran Sanchez Becquerel said in his report published in the Spanish newspaper The Confidential.
The puzzling question regarding this matter is what makes the human mind capable of creating these dreams and then eliminating them?
This confusion has prompted scientists to conduct a new study under the direction of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the United States.
Scientists have found that forgetting dreams is mainly due to a group of neurons that work during sleep to purge the human mind of unnecessary memories.
Thomas Kildof, director of the International Center for Neuroscience in California, the lead author of the study, said that "during REM sleep disorder, these neurons monitor the brain as they enter new information after a dream-filled night."
Rapid eye movement
REM sleep disorder is one of the stages of sleep the body performs every night. This stage occurs after approximately 90 minutes of sleep, and is characterized by rapid eye movements and increased heart rate and active brain waves as well as dreams.
Scientists have found evidence that these cells may play a role in learning and memory. Furthermore, researchers investigated the role these cells play in dream retention and storage in the period after learning something new, before storing new information or consolidating it in long-term memory.
For more than a century, scientists have highlighted the role sleep plays in storing memories.Meanwhile, research has shown that sleep helps the brain store new memories.Another incision, including Francis, Crick, the discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, says that sleep - especially during REM sleep - is the ideal time when the brain deletes or forgets excess information.
Other recent studies in mice during sleep have shown that the brain selectively removes the tangled connections between neurons involved in certain types of sleep learning, including the REM sleep disorder stage. Overall, no studies have yet demonstrated how this is happening.
"Understanding the role of sleep in oblivion can help researchers better understand a wide range of memory-related diseases, such as PTSD and Alzheimer's disease," said Janet Hee, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
"This study provides the most accurate evidence that REM sleep disorder can play a role in the way the brain decides which memories it will store," Janet said.