Why do often we forget what we dreamt after waking up?
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In part, because your dreams don’t make as much sense as you think they do. Your brain has an area responsible for what is called reality checking. You see someone with three arms, your brain goes, “Whoa! That can’t be right, let’s take a closer look”. You do, realize it is really two people standing at a weird angle, and all is well.
While dreaming, reality checking is reduced. That’s why you can be an adult back in middle school, interact with dead relatives, or have to take a day off of work so you can go pitch for the Yankees, accepting it all without consciously questioning it. A dream will seem to make sense while you are dreaming, that there is some logic holding it together, but only because you aren’t looking at it too hard. When you wake up and try to remember, your brain and its fully functional reality checker want to put it into some kind of rational narrative. There isn’t one, so you are left with disconnected memory fragments and the impression there was something deeper there you are now missing.
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