Why this book:  I have been very interested in brain function, health, and dreams for much of my life. This book was strongly recommended by my friend Mike Gosh.  It is related to other books I’ve recently read, to include: Descartes Error,   7 1/2 Lesssons about the Brain, and The Intention Experiment.

Summary in 4 Sentences:  The two authors of When Brains Dream are scientific dream researchers who chose to write a book on dreaming in language and style that would appeal to the educated layperson, and in it, they explore the mythology  about dreams and the history of more recent scientific research into the dream experience.  Scientific research has found some validity in conventional wisdom about dreams and dreaming, but also much that doesn’t necessarily or certainly not always stand up to scientific scrutiny.  The authors go into all of the things that I find interesting about dreams and they introduce me to other aspects which were unfamiliar to me.   The authors make a clear attempt to be fair in describing different theories about the purpose and sources of dreams, and offer simple advice for how do deal with pathological sides of dreaming (nightmares, recurrent dreams PTSD) as well as how to most effectively use dreams to enhance one’s life. 

My Impressions:  Fascinating and thorough look at the phenomenon of dreaming for the educated layperson.  I listened to it rather than read it – it is a short read at 336 pages, and 9 hours to listen to it.  There is so much content in this short book, that it was sometimes difficult keep up with while listening to it.   It is a current (as of 2021) review of the state of research into various aspects of dreaming and the potential significance of dreaming to our lives.  In listening to it, the challenge was that with so much new information (for me) and content, I was unable to highlight or mark sections I would have liked to have returned to for a review.  That makes this review more difficult to write, given that there was so much new and I could only absorb and retain so much as I listened.   For someone who is really interested in exploring dreaming, I’d recommend reading the book, rather than listening to it – though I did truly enjoy the listening experience. I just wasn’t able to retain as much as I would have liked. 

Given that I don’t have a hard copy to review, I’ll simply list some of the topics and impressions I recall from listening to the book, that I found most interesting:

• History of theories of dreaming.  The authors look briefly at various theories that have existed in (mostly Western) cultures about dreaming over millennia, but explore in more depth the key researchers starting in the 18th century, continuing into the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on those best known – Freud and Jung – but also including many whose name and work were unfamiliar to me.  The most serious and scientific dream research took off in the mid 20th century with the “discovery” of REM sleep in the 1950s, and continues to this day.
• Why we dream.  They explore various theories about why we dream, the evolutionary and biological components, how dreaming may serve brain health as well as deal with unresolved issues in our conscious life, aid our memory functions and integrate disparate thoughts and experiences into our memories and consciousness. 
• Sleep.  They take a detour to explain and explore sleep itself – its purpose in health and wellness, the various stages of sleep and their purpose.  This is important because later they describe different kinds of dreams that we experience in different stages of sleep. Apparently, we dream in ALL stages of sleep, but those dreams we most remember normally occur in REM sleep.
• Hypnogogic dreaming.  This is the dreaming we do just as we’re falling asleep.  In my own case,  these little dreams are what tell me that I’m indeed falling asleep.  This a very different stage of dreaming from normal REM and non-REM sleep dreaming, and these dreams have their own characteristics and often can serve us differently.
• Dream Incubation.  They offer techniques for inducing dreams we would like to have in order to explore feelings or reactions to things that are occurring in our conscious life, or perhaps to help us solve a problem. That dreams sometimes open the door for the subconscious mind to help solve problems that are confounding us in our conscious lives has a long history, and the authors tell us how to increase the likelihood of effective dream incubation. 
• The “NEXTUP” model. The authors developed their own model to help explain the function of dreams.  Their  NEXTUP (Network EXploration To Understand Possibilities)  model is referred to frequently in discussing ideas about why we dream what we dream.  The NEXTUP model claims that the brain sorts through our its network of memories to help process, explain and understand the past and prepare for/predict the future. This model explains that “While dreaming, the brain identifies associations between recently formed memories (typically from the preceding day) and older, often only weakly related memories, and monitors whether the narrative it constructs from these memories induces an emotional response in the brain.” (from an article written by the two authors in The Scientist, available here.)  Whether there is an emotional response to a memory tells the brain whether a memory is significant.
• Meaning of dreams and dream content- theories  There are many and conflicting theories of what and how much meaning one should give to the content of dreams.  The standard answer is “It depends.” Their discussion of NEXTUP begins this discussion.  Sometimes dreams provide powerful input clearly relevant to our conscious lives. More often than not however, dreams are gibberish, a potpourri of random and crazy impressions and bizarre incidents that make little sense to us – and indeed, that characterizes most – but not all – of the dreams I remember.  The authors generally agree with the “widely held view that dreams reflect the dreamer’s current thoughts and concerns as well as recent salient experiences,” but they doubt that most dreams carry important messages or deserve careful interpretation.  This is a fruitful and fascinating discussion led by two scientists who’ve been exploring dreams and dreaming for decades. 
• Creativity and problem solving.  Related to dream incubation, the authors explore how dreams have enhanced creativity by being unconstrained by our daily prejudices and social conditioning, and therefore can open the door to solutions to problems or ideas that are somehow difficult to access when we are awake. He shares how a number of great inventions have their origins in the dreams of inventors, from Edison, to Einstein, and artistic creations from Dali to Paul McCartney.
• RBD -REM-sleep Behavioral Disorder – Most of us have a biological switch that makes us immobile or essentially paralyzed when we are in REM sleep. But this mechanism malfunctions for some people, and during a violent dream, people have been known to physically hurt themselves and/or others, acting out bizarre or violent dreams.  The authors explain what current science believes is happening here and what are some of the current treatments.
• Sleepwalking (somnambulism)  Another strange phenomenon in which the person shows qualities of being both asleep AND awake simultaneously. Again, they share what the science says about this state and the current state of treatments.
• Nightmares, PTSD, Narcolepsy – these are among the sleep dysfunctions that they explore in significant detail, as well as various therapies that have worked in helping people move beyond these challenges.  We all have nightmares – and their sources are varied. They also address recurring nightmares, and how these are often different from nightmares originating in PTSD, which have their own specific characteristics.   Narcolepsy is just falling asleep suddenly at inopportune times.  I learned a new term for nightmare: “dysphoric dreaming.”
• Lucid Dreaming – Because this has gotten so much attention in recent years, they spend a lot of time exploring the myths, science, reality, and controversy surrounding lucid dreaming, as well as the ongoing research.  They describe how there are different levels of lucid dreaming, from momentarily knowing that you are dreaming, to being consciously aware throughout a dream and being able to direct actions and ask questions of characters in one’s dream.   They claim that most of us are capable of developing the capacity to have some aspects of lucid dreaming with a certain amount of practice, and they provide guidance for how to become a lucid dreamer. One has to begin by training oneself to remember one’s dreams, and they provide guidance as to how.
• Telepathic, pre-cognitive and clairvoyant dreaming – Another fascinating topic associated with dreaming to which they give a lot of attention.  They discuss the controversy surrounding  the validity of telepathic dreaming, describing experiments that have been taking place for decades that convince these authors that, thru mechanisms unknown, other people can intentionally and telepathically impact other people’s dreams.  In fact I participated in an experiment like this when I was an undergraduate 50 years ago.  The authors describe The Grateful Dead experiment that gave evidence to support that there is something to it.  Regarding pre-cognitive and clairvoyant dreaming, the authors are skeptical – arguing (along w Gary Klein in his Sources of Power) that subconscious awareness of environmental clues probably have informed dreams that appear precognitive. One of the authors is a complete non-believer in the ESP of dreams; the other is skeptical but more open to the possibility. They both note that such metaphysical issues don’t lend themselves well to scientific experiments. 

When Brains Dream is a fascinating look at this aspect of our creative lives – in which, while we sleep, we create realities and activities that we could never imagine in our waking conscious lives.  The authors claim that the dreaming brain attempts to represent to us in different forms what has been and what might be in our lives – in the same way that artists – painters, composers, novelists attempt to create images that reflect aspects of our lives that we may be too preoccupied to see for ourselves.  . Dreams are puzzling indicators as to who we really are, beneath the masks we show to the world every day, and given how much of our lives we spend sleeping (and dreaming) it is a worthwhile topic to study. Given that the  authors offer and respect different perspectives and counter-theories to their own, and openly admit that there is so much that we still don’t know,  I have faith in what these authors present in When Brains Dream.