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Our sleep is not even throughout the night. In the approximately 90-minute cycle, we experience five stages: the falling asleep phase, the light sleep phase, the transition to deep sleep, the deep sleep phase and the REM phase (rapid eye movement).
Depending on the time of day, the duration of the individual phases varies: While we have longer deep sleep phases at the beginning of the night, the duration of the REM phase increases in the morning hours and the body prepares to wake up. Based on brain activity, researchers in sleep laboratories can measure the stage of the sleeper. In the REM phase, brain activity is high, which is why we dream particularly vividly during this time.
Whether we can remember it depends on the phase in which we wake up. If the alarm clock rings right after a REM phase, there is a high probability that we are still thinking about the nocturnal fantasy. Most of the time, people can recall the last dream, the others are too far back. Several dreams can be remembered by people who woke up several times during the night and could not fall asleep again so quickly.
Are there conscious dreams?
If you would like to remember your nocturnal adventures, you can practice it. For example, it can help if you keep a diary and fill it out immediately after waking up. There are even lucid dreamers, i.e. people who can consciously control their dream. They know that they are asleep and can influence the action, in which case it is also called lucid dreaming.
This is not an innate ability, but can be learned. A diary is also useful for this. It is also helpful to regularly ask yourself: “Am I dreaming right now?” and to consider whether individual things can correspond to reality, for example the time or local conditions.
