The Mind at Night: The new science of how and why we dream by Andrea Rock, Basic Books/Perseus, $26/拢19.99, ISBN 0738207551 Reviewed by Laura Spinney
THE short answer to why and how do we dream is, we still don鈥檛 know. But it is looking more and more likely we do it for a biologically useful reason. And memory consolidation is a prime contender.
In The Mind at Night Andrea Rock does a good job of weaving into the story the often colourful characters of the researchers whose work she discusses. As she does so, the domination by the US of the field since the 1950s becomes clear.
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Interesting, then, to discover from her epilogue that much of the most innovative work on dreaming is now going on in Canada and Europe, while US federal funding agencies focus more narrowly on research into sleep disorders.