When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep

by Antonio Zadra, Robert Stickgold

Questions on the origins and meaning of dreams are as old as humankind, and as confounding and exciting today as when nineteenth-century scientists first attempted to unravel them. Why do we dream? Do dreams hold psychological meaning or are they merely the reflection of random brain activity? What purpose do dreams serve?

When Brains Dream addresses these core questions about dreams while illuminating the most up-to-date science in the field. Written by two world-renowned sleep and dream researchers, it debunks common myths; that we only dream in REM sleep, for example—while acknowledging the mysteries that persist around both the science and experience of dreaming.

Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold bring together state-of-the-art neuroscientific ideas and findings to propose a new and innovative model of dream function called NEXTUP—Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities. By detailing this model’s workings, they help readers understand key features of several types of dreams, from prophetic dreams to nightmares and lucid dreams.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Neuroscience, Audiobook, Brain, Biology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sleep and vaccination The body performs certain operations when we sleep that are minimal when we are awake. These include growth (in children) and maintenance of the immune system. Sleep is crucial after a vaccination. You need five nights of 8 hours (or whatever is a good night's sleep for you) after any vaccination. And you should have three good nights before too. If you don't the immune response can be as low as 62% as opposed to 100% by someone who slept well. I didn't know this, the book is valuable for this point alone. There is much research on this, why aren't doctors and the media telling people this with the present world-wide vaccination programme? Is it because they don't know, that the research info vaccination and immune response efficacy is not something that filters down?
____________________

Why are we so unknowable to ourselves? Is it because so much of our lives are spent asleep where we continue to have an active mental life. Awake from a dream and for a minute or two, you can recall that you were actively living an alternative life. A few minutes later and it's gone, just flashes and nuggets of this life you live unconsciously.

"Unconsciously" is key. We are both unconscious to the world around us and unconscious of this sleeping-life, thus the abiding interest in dreams and the attempt to find out their purpose and their meaning. However, no matter how much data the book produced and analysed, it really didn't add anything much to what i already knew.

Almost every popular science book has to have a detailed history of how we arrived at this point, going back to the Egyptians or Sumerians or whatever and progressing through religion to Freud or whoever the major players were. This gets boring if you have read other books on the subject, but that isn't the fault of the authors. The book would have benefited from a better editor who would have seen the authors' dream project, NEXTUP (kind of annoying acronym for Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities which is pretty meaningless really) went on too long, as did other subjects and cut it down to the nuggets of interest. I'd rather read a short book that was punchy with points and anecdotes than a long one with endless, detailed explanations, that's just padding.

I've read two other sleep books where the subject matter overlaps somewhat, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams and The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep and preferred them - 5 star books. This is like 3.5 star upgraded to 4, because of the initial point of the review - sleep and vaccines. I would give it 10 stars for that point alone.

[Mircea Petcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

De ce dormim?
În principal pentru evoluția memoriei (stabilizare, amplificare, integrare și extragerea esenței).

De ce visăm?
Răspunsul e puțin mai complicat. Există cercetători care susțin că visele sunt un produs secundar al creierului, fără vreo funcție anume.
Autorii cărții propun teoria NEXTUP (network exploration to understand posibilities). Visele dau voie creierului să facă asocieri îndepărtate, care de obicei nu au loc în stare de veghe. Multe dintre aceste asocieri sunt bizare, dar câteva se dovedesc a fi utile. Mi se pare o teorie plauzibilă, având în vedere câte s-au scris despre vise.

Cartea poate fi tehnică pe alocuri.

Recomand

[Literary Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve had such strange dreams during the COVID-19 pandemic that I was thrilled to find WHEN BRAINS DREAM.

This neuroscientifically-based exploration provides the answers I sought and so many intriguing insights into dreaming.

Written by two world-famous dream and sleep scientists, WHEN BRAINS DREAM reveals:

. The origin and significance of dreams
. Ways to understand different types of dreams (nightmares, lucid, prophetic)
. How dreams boost creativity and insight
. Dream myths and truths

Comprehensive, easy to understand, ever fascinating, and highly recommended!

5 of 5 Stars

Pub Date 12 Jan 2021

Thanks to the authors, W. W. Norton & Company, and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

#WhenBrainsDream #NetGalley

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Brains Dream is a thoroughly researched and comprehensive book on dreaming, and all the current research available on the topic. However, upon completing the book, one is left with one resounding realisation: there simply isn't much information available on the topic. Theories and theories abound, with sprinkles of real truth in between.

The lack of knowledge on the subject is hardly the authors' fault, however, the content of the book could have been more clearly expressed so one can align one's expectations accordingly. In the end, I felt like the book could have been halved and I would have covered the same points and learnt the same lessons. The hard truth is that we barely know anything about the dream world and our subconscious mind in comparison to the other sciences - and we probably will never know much about something that many would argue is from the spiritual realm.

[Madeline Kaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

decently interesting, not super lifechanging - and it was a little off putting that in between discussions of the really interesting stuff, the authors would pause to essentially pedal their model of dream theory to the readers and insist no other theory fits quite like theirs, before continuing with the info. that being said, still pretty interesting stuff!

[Muriel (The Purple Bookwyrm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

More accurate rating: 9.5/10.

When Brains Dream is a great non-fiction book that goes over what we know (and don't yet know) about dreams, and their biological function(s) - written by two neuroscientists too, who study dreams themselves.

It really was a thorough overview: the authors start by defining their object of study, and going over an abbreviated history of dream research starting in the early 19th century. They also go over common myths and misconceptions the general population - and, hell, even some scientists - tend to have about dreams and always do a really good job of explaining ideas and concepts in an accessible, yet rigorous, way.

The authors, being researchers themselves, also use the book to put forward their own model of dream function, called NEXTUP, and link up a lot of other hypotheses about, and peculiarities of, dream function, to it in a very convincing fashion.

The book covers pretty much everything I believe it should have covered: the neurochemistry of the sleeping and dreaming brain, sleep and dream phases, variations in dream type and content across sleep phases, the memory-strengthening functions of REM sleep and dreaming, the thymo-regulatory functions of REM sleep and dreaming, how dreams are created by the brain, dream analysis, nightmares and bad dreams, dysphoric and dysfunctional dreaming, lucid dreaming, etc...

In that respect, it was an infinitely more satisfying read than Why We Dream, a pop-sci book about dreams and dreaming written by a journalist I read back in the Autumn of 2021. The only reason I gave it a 9.5/10 rating rather than a 10/10 is because I would've liked to see additional content about dreaming, dreaming dysfunction, and neuropsychiatric disorders beyond that of PTSD specifically (antidepressants can affect dreaming, for example, and sleep and dreaming are often affected by things like depression, or even ASD).

But otherwise, this was, like I said, a great non-fiction book about a subject I find fascinating - probably because I've always had a particularly vivid and intense oneiric life myself -, and that I would definitely recommend. In fact I liked it so much I'll probably bother to buy a physical copy at some point for my personal library.

PS: I also learned that "epic dreaming" is a (potentially dysfunctional) thing, and it definitely fits a lot of dreams I've had over the years... Which unfortunately probably contributes to the fact my sleep is chronically non-restorative, and my near-permanent state of fatigue. 😓

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Overall this was pretty interesting. It starts with the biological necessity of dreaming—still unclear—and various theories about why we dream and what meaning, if any, that dreams have. It even looks at the parapsychology research related to dreams. It also discusses sleep disorders and nightmares. (I learned that my husband’s yelling and kicking in his sleep is called REM sleep behavior disorder.) Some areas of the book were way more detailed than I needed, so I started to zone out there.

Sleep is such a biological need that animals that would die if they slept normally (ocean mammals and some birds), still sleep with the halves of the brain taking turns. But dreaming while sleeping? Is that needful? Most theories involve memory processing and stress management and problem solving, which all seem to be true at least some of the time.

You don’t sleep only in REM sleep, but these dreams are more vivid. Sleep cycles run 90 minutes, and deeper dreams are later in your sleep time. But we often forget our dreams, so how important are they?

There are dreams that are very common to people—being naked or improperly dressed, teeth falling out, failing a test—but even these happen to 80 percent of the population, not 100 percent.

Personally I have found my dreams kind of weird. I haven’t meant many people who have recurring dreams about flying spaceships, or who die and the dream keeps going. I am often not a character in my dreams, and if I am, I am often somebody else. I am usually aware I am dreaming, but if I think too hard about it, I will wake up, so I kind of pretend I don’t know. I often taste and smell in my dreams and feel pain. Sometimes there is background music, and last night there was a narrator. My dreams are always extremely visually detailed.

Because I have so many lucid dreams, I have created several dream hacks as a result: I have a bunker I can escape to if a dream is unpleasant. I can unzip the air to retrieve missing items like keys and a camera that my subconscious left me without in a deliberate attempt to sabotage me, as it likes to do. I am still working on teleportation. (I can turn invisible and levitate pretty well.) In one dream, I was experimenting by trying to erase the current scenery and replace it with new one, thinking that would help the teleportation process. I closed my eyes but could still see. I covered my eyes with my hands, and then my vision was blocked. While dreaming, I found this discovery quite fascinating. I have had several dreams come true, but I ascribe that to coincidence.

In short, the why of dreaming remains a mystery. And Freud’s ideas were not only wrong but stolen from others.



Clean content; sex dreams mentioned but not described

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Brains Dream: Exploring The Science & Mystery of Sleep [2021] - ★★★

This book was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021. In this book, the authors, Professors of the Université de Montréal and Harvard Medical School respectively, have a goal to explain the “dreaming brain” and start with the early research into dreams done by some Greek philosophers before talking about the dreaming theories of Freud and Jung. The authors then go on to explain REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and the discovery of it by Aserinsky and Kleitman in 1953. What follows are the explanations of some well-known theories about dreaming, for example those that relate to (i) memory; (ii) evolutionary advantage (“role-play”); (iii) problem-solving; (iv) creativity and (v) emotions. Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold then move on to sleep disorders in their book, talking about narcolepsy and sleep paralysis. The major issue in these book sections is that they are filled with too many obvious statements that could have been edited out. There are so many of these obvious statements in the book that it often reads like a sleep and dream manual series for “complete dummies”. For example, I certainly did not pick up this new book to find out to my “amazement” that “our brain and mind never rest” [Zadra/Stickgold, 2021: 270], that “just about everyone dreams”, that “the Frozen characters Olaf and Elsa don’t dream” [2021: 82] or that “absence of dream recall clearly is not proof of the absence of dreaming” [Zadra/Stickgold, 2021: 52], but that is what I found inside. The authors constantly refer to some future chapters in the book, and, most probably, an up-to-date college textbook on psychology may provide a more interesting and insightful overview of the topic.

I lucid-dream spontaneously since childhood and consider lucid-dreaming (a state where a person is aware that he or she is dreaming while having a dream) to be very important to our understanding of dreams and consciousness, but the problem is that the authors hardly offer any explanation of it or talk about its causes at length; rather, they offer some techniques of how to start lucid-dreaming, techniques which belong more inside some new age self-help books, rather inside such a serious non-fiction book as When Brains Dream penned by two eminent Professors. (Accurate) dream recall and vividness of dreams are important for the development of lucid dreaming (I have always had both), but from my own personal experience and side I can also suggest monitoring one’s thoughts during the day, day-dreaming (within reason, of course), connecting with one’s inner self (interpret this as broadly as possible) and becoming more aware of one’s feelings during the day. Some insight into lucid dreaming the authors nevertheless give: “When brains dream lucidly”, they write, “frontal regions that are associated with self-reflective awareness during waking, but that are normally turned off during REM sleep, become more active” [Zadra/Stickgold, 2021: 233].

Finally, Professor Zadra and Professor Stickgold offer their own theory into the nature of dreaming in this book. The so-called “NEXT UP” theory “suggests that the function of dreaming is to explain the past and predict the future, to discover what’s next up in our lives. This is the brain’s task while we dream” [Zadra/Stickgold, 2021: 269, 270]. To achieve that “the dreaming brain attempts only to show us what has been and what might be”. It shows us that we cannot yet fully explain [Zadra/Stickgold, 2021: 270]. The researches then note “dreaming is a unique form of sleep-dependent memory evolution, one that extracts new knowledge from existing information through the discovery and strengthening of…often previously unexplored associations” [Zadra/Stickgold, 2021: 271]. Of course, they cannot prove that empirically in any way, but this theory sounds logical, even if “limiting”. Undoubtedly, our brain works ceaselessly during the night, processing events from our lives, sorting memories, calculating, thinking, trying to come to terms with either unpleasant events or come up with internal solutions, etc. Perhaps, the dreaming brain really tries to predict the future and open our minds to the multitude of possibilities open to us in real life through the finding and presentation of new opportunities by the process of imagining, cataloguing, eliminating and making (unlikely) associations, but, is it ALL that it does? Knowing how complex our brains are, the explanation is a little simplistic and probably our brain does a million other things besides while we sleep, and dreams have a mountain of other reasons we cannot even imagine. The Professors’ theory seems be an “easy way out”, too. The researchers claim that their theory is new and inventive, but it is not – it is a mish-mash of other existing theories all put together - memory, evolutionary (the researchers’ “memory-evolution”) and maybe even Freudian theories (researchers’ “associations” wording).

Though When Brains Dreams is an engaging account of a dreaming brain that summarises well the research in this field so far, the book is also laden with obviousness and, unfortunately, focuses too much on the “why” question, as opposed to the “how” issue. The “relaxed” style of the book baffles, rather than says something insightful or concrete about dreaming, and the researchers’ own theory into dreaming is hardly something more than a clever “conglomeration” of all the others.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is Nonfiction and the title/subtitle is completely accurate. But this was not my cup of tea. It felt long and repetitive. I wondered more than a few times, "Why do I need to know this?"

I did like the science behind dreams as this one started. So 2 stars.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big thanks to W.W. Norton and Company and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book.

When Brains Dream is an absolutely fascinating exploration into the cutting edge science of dreams. I had so many 'wow' moments while reading this book.

The book begins with an overview of the history of dream science. This really helps to set the stage and provide a foundation that the book later builds on. I especially enjoyed learning about other scientists that came before Freud and the kinds of questions and experiments they undertook.

A key part of book proposes a new explanation for dreaming and it's potential purpose. While this was absolutely fascinating, I found some of the material hard to grasp and integrate into my understanding. I wonder if this could have been told in a more simplistic way that would appeal to a broader audience?

Overall however, this is a fascinating book for anyone with an interest in dreaming and the brain. It's certainly broadened my horizons and expanded my knowledge in wonderful ways.

[Bridget · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite disappointing. There was a lot of filler and allusion to what had been discussed in previous chapters and would be discussed in future chapters without any chapter saying much at all. The authors are mainly trying to advertise their model of dreaming and push how every topic they touch on is supported by it. For a book that has science in the subtitle, there was little talk of the science. Perhaps the goal was to make it extremely approachable for a general audience but this overshot in my opinion and was so high level as to be uninteresting and uninformative.

[Tracey Allen at Carpe Librum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2022, When Brains Dream - Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep by Antonio Zadra & Robert Stickgold was my latest choice in books about sleep and dreaming. Largely academic in nature, the book mentions many scientific sleep studies and may be a dry read for some.

According to the authors, we dream in all phases of sleep and most people dream for at least two-thirds of the night. Some researchers believe we dream all night but if you don't believe you dream at all, you do, you just don't remember your dreams on waking. Often something can happen later in the day to trigger the memory of a dream and I can still conjure the memory of dreams from days, weeks and months ago.

I'll admit I was excited early on in this book when I read:

"... we can think of dreams as either real life; portals into equally real or alternate worlds; messages and prophecies from the gods; unfulfilled wishes; random brain noise; nocturnal entertainment; communications from the future, the dead, or other minds; sources of personal insights, problem solving, and creativity; or a window into memory processing." Page 9

Hopes the authors were going to expound on each of these topics were soon dashed as I realised I was in for a scientific and academic look into dreams and dreaming. Having said that, I'd love to share my key takeaways.

It was reaffirming to read about the process proving stimuli received during sleep like smells and sounds can actively influence the dream you're having. I'm pretty sure we've all experienced the phenomenon where the sound of your alarm begins as something else in your dream before you wake up and realise it's actually your alarm going off. In one study, the smell of a burnt match or drop of water on a participant's forehead had a direct impact on the content of the dream they were having. Interesting, right? Although I did find myself chuckling at the thought of the participant waking up to a researcher with a lit match near their head.

Also reaffirming previous learned information was the correlation between the use of smart phones and insomnia. You can't fail to notice that most people turn to their phones in moments that were once spent zoning out or gazing into the distance while waiting for something or someone. Now, any moment of spare or dead time has users reaching for their device, however this leaves no time for the brain to process thoughts during the day.

Later, when the lights go out and the phones and tablets are silent and on charge, our mind is flooded with all sorts of thoughts from the day. This makes sense as pre-sleep is the brain's opportunity to sort through the day and tag any concerns for later processing during sleep. With that in mind, we should allow ourselves to zone out and be with our thoughts more often. This doesn't mean we need to meditate but you don't need to kill time or multitask all the time, just be with your thoughts.

"Our dreams rarely come to neat endings. The most common end for a dream report is, 'And then I woke up.' the dreaming brain doesn't plot out whole stories." Page 142

When we dream the mind wanders from topic to topic in a haphazard manner in the same way our daytime thoughts have no logical structure during waking hours. Another interesting tidbit in When Brains Dream was the fact that those who were born before the introduction of colour TV actually dreamed in black and white about 40 per cent of the time.

On the content of dreams:

"At a more global level, the dreamer is usually faced with some kind of problem. These can range from relatively minor difficulties - planning a course of action, trying to make sense of a situation, or finding a lost object - to serious physical or psychological dangers such as being lost, falling ill, facing interpersonal conflicts, dealing with environmental hazards, or fleeing from physical perils." Page 157

Typical dreams include dreaming of falling, being late for something, being chased, and school and study related dreams. Do you have a recurrent dream? I'd love to know!

I'm a lucid dreamer but researchers have now been able to communicate with advanced lucid dreamers in a lab with a set of pre-arranged signals. When the participant enters a dream state they communicate with researchers via a series of eye movements at the beginning of a pre-set task and when they complete it. Now that's wild!

I enjoyed seeing the list of reality checks to perform while dreaming to determine if you're awake or dreaming, they include:

"These can take many forms, including trying to read, staring at yourself in a mirror, turning on a light in a dark room, or trying to push your fingers through your palm. In most dreams, you will experience difficulties reading, mirror reflections quickly become unstable, light switches fail to work properly, and your fingers may pass through your palm or give rise to other unusual sensations." Page 238

According to the authors, carrying out these reality checks can help you realise if you're dreaming or not.

It's widely accepted that most people can't read in their dreams, but after reading this book I focussed on my lucid dreaming ability and was actually able to read in a dream I was having! I was on a plane and was able to read the title of the book the person across the aisle from me was reading. I could also read the text on a computer screen that showed an email sent by the previous passenger. Apparently this is a rare feat so I'm pretty proud to have taken my love of reading into my dreams.

When Brains Dream - Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep by Antonio Zadra & Robert Stickgold is recommended for the dedicated non fiction reader familiar with the basics of sleep who wants to delve into the latest scientific developments.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating! This book also goes into great detail on the importance of sleep and what happens biologically while in different sleep patterns.

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look into the history of dream research, current dream research & the findings, as well as the psychology of dreaming and what dreams mean in our every day lives.
Told in an interesting manner, this book tells the newest advances and research going on in dream laboratories, what is being learned, how the knowledge is shaping and what we yet don't know.
An enjoyable and interesting read.

[Channa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5! Science books or biographies with 500+ pages are my personal pet peeve, so I was glad to stumble across this relatively short read. When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep was informative and approachable as it delved into a field notorious for its countless questions and limited answers. As other reviews have mentioned, however, the paucity of empirically-proven information on dreaming did bog the book down for me. The authors' own model of dream function, NEXTUP, was interesting to read about, but didn't necessarily strike me as any more compelling than the plethora of radically different theories explaining the same phenomenon. (For instance, even the idea that dream has function is contested by some contemporary researchers!) Certain insights caught my attention (e.g. the role of sleep in immunization and vaccination; dreams' ability to explore weak associations and aid in memory processing), but they were buried in the drawn-out, fluffier bits.

Bottom line: While the relative lack of evidence and shared assumptions did make this a difficult subject to navigate, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Zadra and Dr. Stickgold's clear fascination with their field of study and the lovely convivial tone they maintain throughout.

[John Majerle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been searching without success for a science based book on this topic for several years. Finally one has been published and, even better, I found it incredibly well researched and well written.

My only disappointment is that scientific dream research has been neglected for so long. I was hoping to learn a lot more about this fascinating topic that affects all of us every day only to find that there are many more questions than answers. I applaud the authors for not making wild unsubstantible explanations. I was fascinated to discover how the research is performed and how they debate the result of their experiments.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. There is a lot of stating of the obvious in this book, plus some speculation that was mildly interesting but did not feel scientifically grounded. We still have a lot to learn about dreaming. There have been major strides forward in the scientific understanding of the brain over the last 50 years, but dreaming seems to lag behind advances in other areas.

[Javier Arranz Barquero · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors are definitely passionate about sleep and dreaming, which makes the read more interesting. However, this passion can act negatively on the written style. Many paragraphs contain repeated information and much attention —and length— is given to unproven theories or hypothesis. The fact of the matter is that there is very few conclusive research on dreaming and this might make writing a book like this more challenging. This however didn’t reduce my disappointment.

I would have appreciated a different structure of the book: 1) What we know about sleep and dreams, showing all the scientifically-backed insights and history (50-70 pages); and 2) Curious hypothesis and findings (200 pages).

Like many other books like this, skimming through the pages is the only way to go if, like me, you are interested in the main scientific ideas. I found myself skipping pages or whole chapters out of not being interested in all the hypothesis.

Overall, an interesting book written in an unappealing manner.

[Danielle T · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second Dreams book for Oct/Nov 2024 Biere Library Storytime Book Club picks, though I definitely lagged in the second half (thus the late December finish). The first half was interesting, going over the history of dream investigation, and then about halfway through the authors propose a new framework (NEXTUP) on how to consider the purpose of dreams and how they work to make the brain explore weak connections for understanding what the brain experienced. I'll confess to forgetting what the acronym is (network exploration to understand possibilities).

Overall, does make me think about the nature of dreams more, and I've never been so aware of dreams and what I'm experiencing than I was during this Oct/Nov period!

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley to allow me to provide an honest review.

This was a fascinating read. The book gave a great overview of the current state of the science of sleeping and dreaming. The presentation of the authors' theory of dreaming was cogent and provided a compelling case for the role of dreaming in memory and interpreting associations.

I think this book would be intriguing to a wide audience and will be recommending it to students in my Health Psychology class, where sleep and dreams are predictable favorite topics of the semester.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book if you’re looking to make sense of how and why we dream. Dreaming is a difficult subject to study, because as the author mentions frequently, we cannot see other people’s dreams. There are some great tips on how to lucid dream as well as some overall fascinating information about how our brains work, theories about the purpose of dreaming, sleep/dream disorders (including PTSD), and so much more. I have very, VERY bizarre dreams, so this book helped me pick apart the whole process to better understand why.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fascinating and by far, the most detailed scientific book on dreams that I have come across! It covers topics such as dreaming in REM vs non-REM, dream myths, lucid dreaming, nightmares, and more. I found it especially insightful that dreams are so important for us to process the day and make new insights, even if we do not consciously remember doing so. While this book shows that there is so much we simply don't know about dreams, we do know of their importance and of some profound ways that they affect our lives. Great, informative read!

[Anna Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

The language in this book was way more accessible than I anticipated. The authors wrote the information as objectively as possible, providing a wide array of views and findings as well as addressing a lot of different questions or areas of sleep/dreams. It’s amazing how even though sleep and dreams have been discussed and studied for centuries, there are many questions we still don’t have the answer to. I’ve never been so eager to get back into a science book before.

[Randy Ringeisen · Rating 5 out of 5]

We spend so much of our lives sleeping that I thought it was time to learn about what happens when we sleep. I recommend this book for that purpose. In short, when we are awake we experience things. When we sleep our brains are helping us make sense of those experiences by building relationships with previous experiences. Dreams are part of the sleep cycle. This book has much more detail about sleeping and dreaming. I found it fascinating.

[Etienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up to date state of research on sleep and dreams. Well explain and very complete it presents the state of the research in this fields in a way that most people will be able to understand. It's a complexes subject, but the book isn't too academic. If this is a topic of interest for you you don't want to miss this book!

[Kimathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great! Lots of facts and science and I love to share tidbits like i’m a smart person with my friends. Would listen again to absorb more information. I love to learn. Especially about something like dreaming because we literally don’t understand what it is. What the fuck is it? What are our little brains doing all night???

[Nicole Simovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on the science of sleeping and dreaming. The book focuses a bit on some history of sleep and dream research but the bulk of the book is focused on the author’s theoretical framework called NEXTUP. Accessible and informative!

[aga · Rating 4 out of 5]

myślałam, że dowiem się jak najwięcej, a co drugi aspekt był jak "tego jeszcze nie wiemy i w sumie na razie nie da się zbadać" - i get it, ale i tak szkoda (chciałabym za jakieś 10 lat przeczytać aktualizację). było trochę oczywistości, ale poza tym dowiedziałam się kilku ciekawych rzeczy

[Mary Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most interesting thing I learned was that the conscious experiencing of dreams allows the brain to track how the mind reacts to situations in the dreams. Good overview of the science of what happens while you are sleeping!

[нєνєℓ ¢ανα · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seemed to me like; "Much ado about nothing." Some chapters were repetitive and in slow motion. It appeared to be a marketing strategy and tactics, period.