Dreams And Memory Essay

For years, scientists and researchers have studied ways to understand and describe dreams. They have tested many theories and hypotheses to answer the many questions that surround dreams. Strauch and Meier describe dreams as “…a world of experiences, where, seemingly separated from our waking lives, we lead a second existence” (1). That being said, how is the brain able to remember these other lives lived in a dream-like state? The brain is a complex set of nerves, so many factors play a part in why one would or would not remember a dream. One factor that helps the brain remember dreams is the fact that dreams are based off memories and past emotions. Another factor is the role that gender plays in remembering our dreams. Also, the number of …show more content…
Multiple studies have been conducted to determine which gender possess the better memory. Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman found that “…women excelled in verbal episodic memory tasks, such as remembering words, objects, pictures or everyday events, and men outperformed women in remembering symbolic, non-linguistic information…” (“Sex Differences in Memory: Women Better than Men at Remembering Everyday Events”). By using the idea of the dream-lag effect and what is known about women’s memory, it is easy to infer that women are better at remembering their dreams than men. If women are better at remembering things that happen in their everyday lives and dreams are based on everyday events, women have a better chance of remembering their dreams. Lizette Borreli from Medical Daily claims that a man’s hippocampus “…is smaller than that of women’s, especially after age sixty” (“Women have Better Memories than Men: How Estrogen Levels Boost Recall”). If the hippocampus is bigger in women than there is more room to store memories from everyday events which allows them to remember more things more clearly. If women are able to remember more than there is a better chance of their dreams being based off of a