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

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

sleeping brain performs multiple forms of memory evolution. It selects recent salient memories for nocturnal processing, prioritizing emotional memories but also processing unemotional ones; it stabilizes and strengthens some memories while extracting rules and gist from others; and it integrates new memories into older, preexisting knowledge netwo

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

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.

our original questions—what dreams are, where they come from, what they mean, and what they’re for.

principle of adjacency13 as being similar to conversations at parties; each comment is relevant to the one before, but the topic drifts so quickly that participants often ask, “Wait, how did we start talking about this?”

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.

It was as if this new DMN activity was telling the brain what to work on once it fell asleep.

Other models have proposed that by combining negatively toned dream imagery with muscle paralysis, REM sleep dreaming carries out an adaptive “desomatization” function that uncouples emotions from their underlying physiology. Indeed, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing patterns are often uncoupled from ongoing dream emotions.