Alice Vernon at The American Scholar:
In 1897, Russian physician and scientist Marie de Manacéïne made a startling but necessary observation: “If we pay no attention to sleep, we thereby admit that a third part of our lives is unworthy of investigation.” The quality and content of our dreams and our sleep, she believed, could reveal an immense amount of information about our worries, our memories, the things we learn, and the condition of our bodies. Dreams should never be washed away with the morning splash of water to the face.
More than 100 years after de Manacéïne, sleep scientist Michelle Carr, based at the University of Montreal, is shining a light on our sleeping minds. Her new book, Nightmare Obscura, is a thorough and engaging tour through the science and philosophy of our dreaming lives. Needless to say, there is still much work to be done in transferring the discoveries of sleep scientists to general clinical practice. Take nightmares, for example. “A nightmare is a real experience,” Carr writes, and indeed, multiple large-population studies have shown that up to 40 percent of adults experience a nightmare every month.
more here.
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