A book, that helps us understand, what's going on with us while we are asleep...

With this book, the author wants to show, that dreams are much more than an expression of unconscious desires - they are the key to solving the mystery of our consciousness.They help us understand, how our brains bring out, what we perceive as reality.

In recent years, great advances have been made in methods of brain research. Apparatuses can measure the activity of neurons during sleep very precisely. The signals, that the scanner receives from the sleeper's head, are showing, what images a person is seeing.

As scientists have systematically collected dream descriptions for decades, there are now huge dream databases. Scientists have an insight into how day-to-day experiences, living conditions and personality are reflected in a dream. As we sleep, our abilities evolve and our brains change. We literally learn in our dreams, our personality evolves through the night.

One thing, that I remember from this book, is the fact, that as we fall asleep, parts of our brains gradually turn off one by one, not all at once. Therefore, we can think or do strange things during the falling asleep phase.

In the book, the author talks about many brain studies around the world related to sleep - the different phases of sleep and brain activity at that time.

In the REM sleep phase, our muscles are turned off, because otherwise we would stand up and accomplish physically the things, that we are currently dreaming. This natural paralysis prevents the dreamer from executing the impulses released from his internal braking. It protects sleeping people and animals from injuring themselves or others. Often, men over the age of 60 are affected by REM behavioral disorders, where they get up in their sleep and can hurt themselves and others by, for example, fighting an intruder in their sleep. This is probably due to the loss of certain brain cells, as almost all patients also suffer from Parkinson's disease or dementia years later. Such patients are usually prescribed sedatives for sleep.

In REM's restless dreams, one sees himself as a natures creature, where he fights for life. Even the one, who lives the peaceful life of an office clerk during the day,  participates in pursuits, runs, fights or falls into an abyss at night.

Interesting were also the studies, which showed, that people, who lived in old times, where there were no movies yet, saw their dreams colorful, but when the cinema came, which was initially black and white, people also saw black and white dreams. Later, when color television appeared, dreams became colorful again. 

And when we look at people, who are born blind, they see dreams just like those, who see normally. However, when interviewed only in the morning, they almost always say, that they never saw anything in their sleep. Because it is difficult for a person, born blind, to imagine, being able to see pictures in a dream. Blind people have even been able to draw the pictures of their dreams later on paper.

This book will help us understand, what happens to us at night as we sleep, and how dreams can help us better understand ourselves and situations.

The first time I listened to this book in audio, because I was running at the same time, but this book is concise and scientific, so it's quite hard to follow it while listening. So I think, it's better for reading.