The twenty-four hour mind
Subtitle: the role of sleep and dreaming in our emotional lives
By: Rosalind D. Cartwright.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780195386837
Subjects: Sleep -- Research; Sleep disorders
Description: In January of 1999, an otherwise nonviolent man under great stress at work brutally murdered his wife in their backyard. He then went back to bed, awakening only when police entered his home. He claimed to have no memory of the event because, while his body was awake at the time, his mind was not. He had been sleepwalking. In this book, the author, a sleep scientist, brings together decades of research into the bizarre sleep disorders known as parasomnias to propose a new theory of how the human mind works consistently throughout waking and sleeping hours. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated EEG and brain imaging technologies, we now know that our minds do not simply "turn off" during sleep. Rather, they continue to be active, and research has indicated that one of the primary purposes of sleep is to aid in regulating emotions and processing experiences that occur during preceding waking hours.^

As such, when sleep is neurologically or genetically impaired or just too short, the processes that good sleep facilitates, those that usually have a positive effect on our mood and performance, can short circuit, with negative results that occasionally reach tragic proportions. Examining the interactions between conscious and unconscious forms of thinking as they proceed throughout the cycles of sleeping, dreaming, and waking, the author demystifies the inner workings of the human mind that trigger sleep problems, how researchers are working to control them, and how they can apply what they learn to further our understanding of the brain. Along the way, she provides an account of the history of sleep research and the birth of sleep medicine that will initiate readers into this field of inquiry and the far reaching implications it will have on the future of neuroscience.^

This work offers a look at a relatively new area of study that will be of interest to those with and without sleep problems, as well as anyone captivated by the mysteries of the brain, and what sleep continues to teach us about the waking mind.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: In the beginning : the early days of sleep research; title: Collecting dreams : watching the sleeping mind; title: Short sleep and its consequences : insomnia; title: Sleep and dreams in depression; title: Sleepwalking into danger : murders without motives; title: More NREM parasomnias : those who injure themselves, seek food or sex, explore, and protect; title: Sleepwalking and state of mind in the courtroom; title: Warnings from the land of nod : nightmares and REM behavior disorder; title: Dreaming and the unconscious; title: The role of dreams in the twenty-four hour mind : regulating emotion and updating the self.