This Is Why You Dream

Enjoyed this a lot. It seems obvious but I never really thought of the evolutionary advantages of forgetting dreams, and the way they would override real, autobiographical memories if retained. The biochemistry of how this is done is really interesting, and how adrenaline brings the executive mode of the brain back online after a few minutes - minutes in which you can record dreams if you want to.

The idea of recurrent nightmares being literally a fixed pattern of connected neurons is interesting - why they always follow the same motifs, and once triggered proceed in a similar way. I guess a lot of recurrent thought patterns are physical structures like this - not just nightmares.

The separate memory system for dreams is also quite interesting - in dreams I often remember things from previous dreams which I have no recollection of when awake, but am never sure if they are actually from previous dreams, or if I’m just dreaming that they are.

Lucid dreaming can be thought of as executive mode of the brain coming online just enough to recognise dreaming.