Dreaming by J. Allan Hobson, Oxford University Press, 拢11.99/$22, ISBN 0192803042 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
THIS is a cool outline of modern knowledge about dreams, a subject of popular myth and superstition, and an explanation of what is really happening in our brains when we dream. Most people have heard of REM dreams, those vivid ones, but there are other dreams that show that the brain is far from entirely switched off during the rest of sleep time. It鈥檚 busy processing, sorting out adaptive information, working off-line, says J. Allan Hobson.
Hobson tells us in Dreaming that both 鈥渨aking and dreaming consciousness鈥� are controlled by chemical systems in the brain. Throughout he uses his own dreams, recorded over many years, as examples while showing how the science of sleep has evolved over the past 50 years. Along the way, Freud takes a battering.
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