Dreaming and episodic memory: a functional dissociation?
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience January 1, 2003 Magdalena J Fosse, Roar Fosse, J Allan Hobson et al.
Sleep mentation often reflects waking life, but not through exact replay of episodic memories. Over 14 days, 29 subjects logged daytime activities and dreams, scoring dream incorporation of waking experiences. Although 65% of 299 sleep mentation reports reflected aspects of recent waking life, episodic replay of waking events occurred in only 1-2% of dream reports. This suggests that sleep's role in memory processing is not primarily about replaying specific episodes, consistent with evidence that sleep does not consolidate episodic memories.