Why do brains dream? (Sleeping & Dreaming Part 2)

Why do brains dream, and why are dreams so bizarre? Why doesn’t your clock work in your dreams? And even though you spend much of your working day looking at your cell phone and computer – why do they almost never make appearances in your dream content? Is dream content the same across cultures and across time? Are dreams experienced in black & white, or in color? Are dreams the strange love child of brain plasticity and the rotation of the planet? What is the relationship between schizophrenia and dreaming? In the future, will we be able to read out the content of somebody’s dream? Join Eagleman this week to learn why and how we spend a fraction of our sleep time locked in different realities, swimming in plots which aren’t real but which compel us entirely nonetheless.

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More Information:

Zadra A, Stickgold R (2021). When brains dream: Understanding the science and mystery of our dreaming minds. WW Norton & Company.

Domhoff GW. The emergence of dreaming: Mind-wandering, embodied simulation, and the default network. Oxford University Press; 2017 Sep 5.

Eric Schwitzgebel (2002). Why did we think we dreamed in black and white? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 33 (4):649-660.

Eagleman DM, Vaughn DA (2021) The Defensive Activation Theory: REM Sleep as a Mechanism to Prevent Takeover of the Visual Cortex. Front Neurosci. 2021 May 21;15:632853. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.632853

Eagleman DM (2020). Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain. New York: Pantheon.

Eagleman DM, Vaughn DA. (2020). Why Do We Dream? A New Theory on How It Protects Our Brains. Time Magazine. Dec 29, 2020.

Jandial R (2024).This Is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life. New York: Penguin Life.

Hobson JA. Dreaming: An introduction to the science of sleep. Oxford University Press, USA; 2002.

Siclari F, Baird B, Perogamvros L, Bernardi G, LaRocque JJ, Riedner B, Boly M, Postle BR, Tononi G. The neural correlates of dreaming. Nature neuroscience. 2017 Jun;20(6):872-8.

Eagleman D, Downar J. (2016). Brain and behavior: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Oxford University Press. 2016.

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