Why is it so hard to remember our dreams?

Question from Lianne Durley

To remember things we need to transfer experiences from short-term storage into long-term storage, but most of the time we don’t do this with dreams. Researchers at Caltech recorded neuron activity in the brains of sleeping rats to find out why. They discovered that during REM sleep, when we dream, the neurons in the hippocampus (which makes memories) stop talking to the neurons of the neocortex (which stores them).

Answered by Laura Mears for Brain Dump in How It Works issue 117 

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