Key points

Sleep and dreaming play a vital role in memory consolidation.

The content of dreams frequently revolves around past people, places, and activities.

Keeping a dream journal enables a deeper engagement with dream memories.

It may seem hard to believe for those who rarely remember their dreams, but psychologists have found strong evidence that sleep and dreaming are closely intertwined with the dynamics of memory . Whether or not the dreams are consciously recalled in waking, the dreaming process seems to play a valuable role in the underlying system by which our memories are created, stored, and retrieved.

The Role of Sleep

Researchers have discovered, for instance, that different stages of sleep support different aspects of memory consolidation, and that sleep deprivati

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