dreams. The function of these N2 dreams is probably intermediate as well. Although REM sleep appears to be seeking weak, often unexpected, remote associations that might be usefully related to memories of unresolved concerns from the day, N2 dreams appear to search for more obviously related episodic memories from the recent past.

Choose a night when you are not overly tired or under the influence of substances that may negatively affect your sleep, such as alcohol, sleeping pills, or recreational drugs. 2.Take a few minutes to think about the problem you want to target in your dreams. You may find it helpful to ask yourself some questions like these: Am I ready to act on th

Sleep provides a unique benefit for all of these different forms of memory evolution. But the different stages of sleep don’t contribute equally. For example, overnight improvement on the typing task depends on how much N2 sleep we get, especially late in the night. Most verbal memory tasks depend on how much N3 sleep we get, while emotional memory

When the brain dreams, how does it create an experience of seeing, hearing, or feeling something that’s as realistic as in waking life? Sebastian is not alone in being confused, and to do justice to the story of dreaming, we must address this problem of what dreams are.

sleep’s role in memory processing, nor about the role that REM and non-REM dreaming might play in these processes. We saw in Chapter 5 that both REM and non-REM sleep contribute to memory evolution. Sleep enhances some memories while allowing others to be forgotten. It processes both emotional and unemotional memories. It enhances some memories in

The multifaceted, integrative approach to dreams espoused by De Sanctis was perhaps best exemplified when he wrote that to be properly understood and interpreted, a dream had to be viewed as a mathematical sum: “The fundamental state of the dreamer (past experiences, intelligence, character, old habits) + the state of the moment (aspirations, passi

we also find a sub-network that helps us recall past events and imagine future ones, another that helps us navigate through space, and yet another that helps us interpret the words and actions of others. And these are the mental functions associated with mind wandering.

He concludes that what counts “is whether the novelty . . . is accepted for inclusion in the domain.”7 This definition implies that the product of the creative act must be of some universal value or significance—a demanding constraint, indeed.

On the other hand, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, at the University of Chicago, takes a much more goal-oriented approach, defining creativity as “any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain [of knowledge (like mathematics)], or that transforms an existing domain into a new one.”