Write a 5 pages paper on how dreams and memory may be related. Even though we have millions of information stored in our minds, it is not necessary that all such information may appear in the form of dreams or associated with the formation of dreams. Moreover, the content of some of the dreams may not be familiar to us and may not have any relations with our past experiences. Why dreams of unfamiliar nature occur? This paper tries to answer the above question and briefly analyses the relationship between sleep, dreams, and memory.

Dreams and memory are two different entities even though they may have some relationships. All the living things may have memory power even though the capacity to memorize may be different for different living things and human beings. The same way most of the living things have the habit of dreaming also. Living things which have memory should have dreams also. The above fact is pointing towards the relationship between memory and dreams.

Sleep is normally classified into two broad categories like deep sleep and normal sleep. Dreams can occur during any stages of sleep. But the dream recalling rate seems to be more when the person undergoes normal sleep compared to the deep sleep. The general perception about sleep is that while we are sleeping the conscious memory will be inactive while the unconscious memory will be active. “The hypermnesia of dreams may be explained by saying that sleep opens the door to the unconscious mind, where all past experiences are preserved in all detail” (Memory in Dreams, 2009). The topics stored in the unconscious memory will cause dreams according to many psychologists. For example, it is quite possible that the stories or the incidents we came to know during my childhood may be stored in the unconscious mind. We will forget such incidents when we grow up because of its absence in the conscious mind. At the same time, such incidents will be active in the unconscious mind which will start working when we sleeping.