High dream recall frequency is associated with an increase of both bottom-up and top-down attentional processes.
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) August 22, 2022 Perrine Ruby, Rémy Masson, Benoit Chatard et al.
People who frequently recall their dreams show larger brain responses to unexpected sounds, even when actively paying attention to a task, indicating enhanced bottom-up processing of irrelevant auditory stimuli. They also exhibit larger brain signals related to expecting and responding to target sounds, suggesting greater top-down attention recruitment. Despite these differences, their behavioral performance on attention tasks is not impaired, though it may come at a higher cognitive cost. The findings propose that in high dream recallers, increased bottom-up processing may facilitate dream recall by promoting awakening during sleep, while enhanced top-down processes may support dream recall through greater awareness or short-term memory stability of dream content.