Learn 3 entries

• What Are Dreams? Definitions and Operational CriteriaA dream is an experience during sleep that a person can report on waking — a definition dream science treats as an operational construct rather than a settled fact about the brain. This article sets out what counts as a dream, why dreaming is not confined to REM sleep, how researchers actually study something known only through the sleeper's report, and what remains genuinely unknown about why we dream.→
• Sleep Stages and Sleep Architecture: How a Night of Sleep Really WorksA night's sleep is not one flat state but a repeating journey through distinct stages. Here is the architecture of sleep — the NREM and REM stages, how they cycle across the night, what each is for, and where dreaming and lucidity fit.→
• What are lucid dreams? The science of knowing you're dreamingA lucid dream is a dream in which you know, while it is happening, that you are dreaming. It sounds like something that could never be tested — yet sleep laboratories have verified it objectively, and we now know it is surprisingly common and can be trained. Here is what lucid dreaming is, why it happens, and what the science does and does not show.→