Melatonin, Dream Recall, and Theta Oscillations: The Cognitive Health Connection
Melatonin supplementation is associated with increased cognitive health including enhanced formation of both short-term [Labban 2021] and long-term [Iwashita 2021] memory. Melatonin is also associated with vivid dreams during REM sleep [Maurizi 1987] and sometimes reports of intense dreams including nightmares.
What is the connection between improved memory and the ability to recall dreams?
Theta Oscillations and REM Sleep
REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM sleep are the two main phases of sleep, during which electrophysiological patterns including sharp-wave ripples, cortical slow oscillations, delta waves, and spindles are observed during non-REM sleep; whereas theta oscillations are consistently present and observed during REM sleep [Jouvet 1969]. These various types of oscillations represent precisely timed activities of underlying neural circuits.
Theta oscillations [Buzsáki 2002] are manifestations of neural circuits involved in the processing of sustaining memory consolidation during sleep [Girardeau 2021].
Furthermore, the ability to generate dreams and the ability to recall dreams is intrinsically dependent on the development of neural systems, and there is a certain correlation between cognitive…
