this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Explain Like I'm Five

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Why do we vividly remember our dreams ~5 minutes after waking up then promptly forget every detail? (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by echoplex21@lemmy.world to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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It’s weird how I’ll see a dream and really ponder over it right after waking only for it to be completely out of my memory shortly after.

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago

This is a somewhat personal theory, not something I know science to confirm, but I imagine, we evolved to have dreams, because they help us play out situations that might come up similarly in the future.

So, maybe you won't ever actually be in underpants in school, but you might still get into an embarassing situation and then know how to laugh it off.

So, the learnings from those dreams, those have to be remember. But the 'simulated' situations in those dreams, they would be bad to remember, because they never actually happened. So, it's also advantageous for survival to not remember them, which is why we generally evolved to not do so.