Dreams are personal conscious experiences created by the brain during sleep. During this time, people are mostly disconnected from the outside world regarding sensory input and motor output. They are generally unable to control or reflect on their dreams.
The sleep stage before waking up is crucial in whether a dream will be remembered. However, the likelihood of recalling dreams varies significantly from person to person and even within the same individual over time.
Some people wake up vividly remembering their dreams, while others can hardly recall them. Why does this happen?
A new study from the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca explores the factors that affect “dream recall”—the ability to remember dreams after waking. It looks at how individual traits and sleep patterns influence this phenomenon.
The reason why some people remember dreams better than others is still a mystery. Some studies suggest that women, young people, and those who daydream are more likely to remember their dreams. However, these findings are inconsistent, and other hypotheses, like personality traits or cognitive abilities affecting dream recall, have even less support.
From 2020 to 2024, researchers at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and the University of Camerino conducted a study with over 200 participants aged 18 to 70. These participants recorded their dreams daily for 15 days while their sleep and cognitive data were tracked using wearable devices and psychometric tests.
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Each morning, participants used a voice recorder to describe their dream experiences immediately after waking. They reported whether they remembered dreaming, had a vague sense of dreaming without details, or could describe their dreams in detail. Throughout the study, participants wore an actigraph, a sleep-monitoring wristwatch that tracks sleep duration, efficiency, and disturbances.
At the start and end of the dream recording period, participants completed psychological tests and questionnaires measuring anxiety levels, interest in dreams, tendency to daydream, memory, and selective attention.
Dream recall, or the ability to remember dreams upon waking, varies greatly among individuals and is influenced by several factors. The study found that people with a positive attitude towards dreams and a tendency to daydream were likelier to remember their dreams.
Sleep patterns also played a significant role: those who experienced longer periods of light sleep were more likely to recall their dreams. Younger participants had higher dream recall rates, while older individuals often experienced “white dreams,” where they felt they had dreamt but couldn’t remember the details, indicating age-related changes in memory during sleep.
Seasonal variations were also observed, with lower dream recall in winter than in spring, suggesting that environmental or circadian factors might play a role.
“Our findings suggest that dream recall is not just a matter of chance but a reflection of how personal attitudes, cognitive traits, and sleep dynamics interact,” explains lead author Giulio Bernardi, a professor of general psychology at the IMT School. “These insights not only deepen our understanding of the mechanisms behind dreaming but also have implications for exploring dreams’ role in mental health and the study of human consciousness.”
“Data collected in this project will serve as a reference for future comparisons with clinical populations,” adds Valentina Elce, a researcher at the IMT School and the study’s first author. “This will allow us to advance research on the pathological alterations of dreaming and their potential prognostic and diagnostic value.”
Journal Reference:
- Elce, V., Bergamo, D., Bontempi, G. et al. The individual determinants of morning dream recall. Commun Psychol 3, 25 (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00191-z
Source: Tech Explorist
