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The Mysterious Science Behind Your Wildest Dreams

Even as scientists learn more and more about dreams, we’re still just scratching the surface.

Pocket Editors

Read when you’ve got time to spare.

Dreaming is a universal human experience. And yet, so much about this sleep phenomenon remains a mystery to us—including why we dream in the first place. Read on to learn about new scientific breakthroughs involving dreaming and how our dreams are impacted by the world around us.

Image by A-Y-N / Getty Images

The Science of Dreaming

Science journalist Alice Robb on why we need to take our dreams seriously.

How Dreams Reveal Brain Disorders

Examining dream content can assist in the diagnosis of psychiatric and neurological illnesses. What does fighting off a lion mean?

Did Covid Change How We Dream?

All around the world, the pandemic provoked strange nocturnal visions. Can they help shed light on the age-old question of why we dream at all?

Night Shifts

Can technology shape our dreams?

Neil Gaiman Knows What Happens When You Dream

In recent years, the word “storytelling” has been thoroughly absorbed by the language of commerce, reshaped into self-aggrandizing doublespeak for “selling.”

Yes, You Can Control Your Dreams: The Strange Science of Lucid Dreaming

Once dismissed as a new age fad, lucid dreaming has gained attention as a possible performance enhancer and therapeutic tool.

Can a Musical Reminder Banish Bad Dreams?

Maybe you’re inside your house, or walking through the park down the street. The scene around you is vividly real, yet altered in ways that are making you feel uneasy. Family and friends appear, but conversations produce a sense of anxiety or even dread.

‘Sleep Language’ Could Enable Communication During Lucid Dreams

Sleep is a semiconscious state, but there are neurons firing in the brain even when all seems quiet. Now brain activity during the deepest sleep phase could make it possible for people to communicate with the waking world during lucid dreaming.

AI Re-Creates What People See by Reading Their Brain Scans

A new artificial intelligence system can reconstruct images a person saw based on their brain activity

A New Test for an Old Theory About Dreams

When a sleeping animal’s eyes twitch beneath its eyelids, is it looking around a dream world?