"Without a doubt, Rock has produced the most informative and readable book on the current state of sleep and dreaming research to come out in the past dozen years." - Nature Neuroscience Review
"[A] seductive, eye-opening analysis of how and why we dream." - The Boston Herald
From Publishers Weekly:
This exceptionally lucid and engaging work of science writing explicates breakthroughs in the study of the dreaming mind from the 1950s to the present day. Rock, an award-winning medical and science reporter, proves a crisp and thorough storyteller as she portrays the professional tensions among scientific innovators and delineates theoretical controversies (in which the legacy of Freud looms large). She frequently cites interviews with neuroscientists and psychologists, bringing out the drama of their intellectual struggles. Opening with the discovery of the REM phase of sleep by a lowly University of Chicago graduate student, Rock charts the subsequent explosion in dream research: investigations into the roles of different parts of the brain in dreaming; theories of animal dreaming and the evolutionary history of dreaming; the nature of memory; and the neurological relationships among dreaming, mental illness and consciousness itself. Examples of dreams are kept to a relevant minimum, but many statistics of interest are reported. In Rock's concluding chapters, a seamlessly narrated account of a period of sustained scientific focus on the dreaming mind eases into a broader discussion of the function of dreaming in the context of contemporary scientific findings and beliefs. Here Rock discourages simplistic dream-symbol decoding in favor of a more complex approach enlightened by present-day theories.
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From the Publisher:
From memory formation to nocturnal therapy, neuroscience's newest discoveries about our dreams.
We spend a good part of our lives dreaming. Yet it's something most of us know very little about. What do our dreams mean and why do we have them at all?
Psychologists and philosophers have long grappled with the mysteries of dreaming, and now-thanks largely to recent innovations in brain imaging -neuroscientists are starting to join the conversation. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist Andrea Rock traces the brief but fascinating history of this emerging field. She then takes us into modern sleep labs across the country, asking the questions that intrigue us all: Why do we remember only a fraction of our dreams? Why are dreams usually accompanied by intense emotions? Can dreams truly spark creative thought or help solve problems? Are the universal dream interpretations of Freud and Jung valid? Accessible and engaging, The Mind at Night shines a bright light on our nocturnal journeys and tells us what the sleeping mind reveals about our waking hours.
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