The Awakening Brain

This chapter synthesizes neurophysiological and neuroimaging findings on the arousal process leading to morning awakening, showing that specific neural networks enable the rapid return of consciousness, yet people often feel groggy and not fully alert for several minutes. This post-awakening period is proposed as a context for consolidating the last dream into memory and for mind-wandering that may facilitate dream recall. The chapter reviews laboratory and non-laboratory studies of dream recall since the late 1950s, including a small field study, and suggests that roughly 95% of dreams are forgotten or never encoded into memory.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter is similar to Chapter 5 in that it provides the first synthesis of the various neurophysiological and neuroimaging findings concerning the nature of the arousal process that leads to the morning awakening. It uses the neuroimaging studies to show that very specific networks lead to the almost instantaneous return of consciousness, but people nonetheless feel groggy and often are not fully alert for a few minutes after they awaken. These findings are very useful from the point of view of the neurocognitive theory of dreaming because this post-awakening period provides a context for the consolidation of the last dream before awakening into memory and for the mind-wandering that often leads to dream recall. The chapter then turns to the task of providing a more detailed explanation of dream recall on the basis of numerous laboratory and non-laboratory studies of dream recall that began in the late 1950s. The chapter also makes use of a small field study of everyday dream recall as well as the large literature on memory consolidation during waking. In the process, the chapter suggests that roughly 95% of dreams are forgotten or were never encoded into memory in the first place.