Why We Sleep

Why We Sleep
Author: Matthew Walker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1501144316

"Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.

When Brains Dream: Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds

When Brains Dream: Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds
Author: Antonio Zadra
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1324002840

"A truly comprehensive, scientifically rigorous and utterly fascinating account of when, how, and why we dream. Put simply, When Brains Dream is the essential guide to dreaming." —Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep 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. When Brains Dream reveals recent discoveries about the sleeping brain and the many ways in which dreams are psychologically, and neurologically, meaningful experiences; explores a host of dream-related disorders; and explains how dreams can facilitate creativity and be a source of personal insight. Making an eloquent and engaging case for why the human brain needs to dream, When Brains Dream offers compelling answers to age-old questions about the mysteries of sleep.

The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams

The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams
Author: Patrick McNamara
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2023-04-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1009208853

The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams provides comprehensive coverage of the basic neuroscience of both sleep and dreams for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. It details new scientific discoveries, places those discoveries within evolutionary context, and links established findings with implications for sleep medicine. This second edition focuses on recent developments in the social nature of sleep and dreams. Coverage includes the neuroscience of all stages of sleep; the lifespan development of these sleep stages; the role of non-REM and REM sleep in health and mental health; comparative sleep; biological rhythms; sleep disorders; sleep memory; dream content; dream phenomenology, and dream functions. Students, scientists, and interested non-specialists will find this book accessible and informative.

Sleep and Dreams

Sleep and Dreams
Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: SteinerBooks
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2003
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780880105125

What are Dreams? Every age, every culture, perhaps every person, have different answers. We can at least agree on one thing, however: dreams are other. Their presence in our lives demonstrates that we are not limited to a single mode of consciousness. The world of sleep is largely a blank for us, an abyss of non-consciousness, yawning between one day and the next, but the very fact that we can dream announces our potential for awareness within that abyss. We spend a third of our life asleep--a fact that dream theorists rarely consider. This startling collection of lectures by Rudolf Steiner, selected and introduced by the psychologist Michael Lipson, provides a truly unique way of approaching dreams, based on an understanding of the spiritual nature of human beings. A radically new view of dreams "as the threshold to spiritual reality" arises, once we acknowledge that physical existence is only the tip of an iceberg hidden largely in the spiritual world. Sleep, death, and meditation are the three realms in which consciousness has the opportunity to deepen its immersion in the divine flow of existence. In principle, we can become infinitely more self-aware in each of them, since human consciousness is not fixed--neither in contents nor in terms of alertness. All day long, the contents of our consciousness change, and during the night, the level changes. These lectures permit readers to glimpse the fantastic depths of experience we normally "sleep through" and to contemplate Steiner's astounding program: to maintain self-aware consciousness through sleep, through death, through all being. Contents: The Secrets of Sleep Sleep and the Three-Part Soul Sleep and the World of the Stars Understanding Sleep through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition An Active Spirit: Dreams and the Spiritual Researcher Our inner Undercurrent: A Continual Dreaming Preparing for a New Birth Dreaming and the Etheric Body Inspiration: Bringing the Unconscious to Consciousness Confronting the Totality of Our Lives through Dreams The Logic and Illogic of Dreams Dreams and Human Development Interpreting Dreams Dreams: The Human Essence in Spiritual Connection

Dreaming Souls

Dreaming Souls
Author: Owen Flanagan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2001-05-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019534958X

What, if anything, do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental noise--"unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys"? With expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. And in Dreaming Souls he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on sleep and dreams and a compelling new theory about the nature and function of dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side effects, "free riders," irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view. But dreams are hardly unimportant. Indeed, Flanagan argues that dreams are self-expressive, the result of our need to find or to create meaning, even when we're sleeping. Rejecting Freud's theory of manifest and latent content--of repressed wishes appearing in disguised form--Flanagan shows how brainstem activity during sleep generates a jumbled profusion of memories, images, thoughts, emotions, and desires, which the cerebral cortex then attempts to shape into a more or less coherent story. Such dream-narratives range from the relatively mundane worries of non REM sleep to the fantastic confabulations of deep REM that resemble psychotic episodes in their strangeness. But however bizarre these narratives may be, they can shed light on our mental life, our well being, and our sense of self. Written with clarity, lively wit, and remarkable insight, Dreaming Souls offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of the oldest mysteries of mental life.

Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams

Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams
Author: Charles McPhee
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1995
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780805025002

An introduction to the art of lucid dreaming discusses the techniques of becoming a conscious participant in one's dreams, the mechanics of sleep, and dream analysis and interpretation

Dement's Sleep & Dreams

Dement's Sleep & Dreams
Author: Rafael Pelayo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2016-12-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781537691121

This is a textbook for a college level science class on sleep and sleep disorders.

Dreams and Visions

Dreams and Visions
Author: Patrick McNamara Ph.D.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2016-09-26
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1440847177

A standout resource on the emerging field of applying neuropsychology and the latest findings in sleep and dream research to religious experience, this book investigates the proven biological links between REM dreams and religious ideas, covering past and current schools of thought in both the science of dreams and the science of religion. Across time and around the world, billions of people with highly dissimilar backgrounds and cultures have felt spiritual or religious inspiration that shaped their lives and supplemented their mental strength—and in many cases, this inspiration came via a dream. The "how" and "why" of this common phenomenon is one that science has largely failed to explain. In this book, nationally recognized behavioral neuroscientist Patrick McNamara taps the latest science in sleep and dreams as well as neuropsychology to investigate one facet of the answer from the "inside out"—the human brain's role. The first study of its kind in an emerging field, Dreams and Visions: How Religious Ideas Emerge in Sleep and Dreams provides a comprehensive summary of past theory and examines the latest science on dreams, REM sleep, cognitive approaches to religion, and neuroscience approaches to religion. Readers will come away with an in-depth understanding of how and why god beliefs and spiritual convictions so often emerge in our dreams. Dedicated sections address special dream types like visitation dreams, nightmares, precognitive dreams, "big" dreams, lucid dreams, paralysis dreams, twin dreams, and more.

Penguin Dreams

Penguin Dreams
Author: J.otto Seibold
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2005-09-29
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780811851008

Chongo Chingi the penguin has a dream in which he experiences the excitement of flying, but then he must wake up.

Understanding Sleep and Dreaming

Understanding Sleep and Dreaming
Author: William H. Moorcroft
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2006-09-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0387286985

Designed primarily as a text this volume is an up-to-date and integrated overview of physiological sleep mechanisms, brain function, psychological ramifications of sleep, dimensions of dreaming, and clinical disorders associated with sleep. It is accessibly written with specially boxed material that enhances the text. Authored by a researcher/clinician/professor with more than 25 years of experience in sleep studies, Understanding Sleep and Dreaming provides a solid basis for those who are not expert in this area. It offers a good foundation for those who will continue sleep studies, while at the same time offering enough information for those who will apply this knowledge in other ways such as clinicians in their individual practices or researchers for whom sleep may be part of a specific study. It is an excellent text for courses on sleep at the undergraduate and graduate levels.