Full Title: Dreaming – An introduction to the Science of Sleep – by J. Allan Hobson

Rating: 4/5

Summary: ‘Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science, … provides a complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain.’

Comments: The book was OK to read in a grounding sort of way, maybe to balance out all the dreaming books I have read that tend to go overboard on the ‘Mystique’ side of dreaming. But it seems a bit dry. Maybe like explaining how my laptop LCD screen gets images on the screen -> wikipedia: ‘Each pixel of an LCD typically consists of a layer of molecules aligned between two transparentelectrodes, and two polarizing filters, the axes of transmission of which are (in most of the cases) perpendicular to each other…’ <- But not really touching the content of the images at all. Leaving that to future science experiments. 

A final piece of the book briefly mentions that Lucid dreaming is possible, but nothing in depth. Would different areas of the brain now become active in a lucid dream versus non-lucid? Saying they happen spontaneously is a bit like the default wimpy random explanation for everything. Shouldn’t they happen when a specific area of the brain is activated during a REM phase of sleep? If he could work with or find an awesome lucid dreamer, combined with brain scans, he could have some nifty results there. Can you learn an arbitrary skill soley in dreams, then demonstrate it in waking reality? 

I will look for Hobson’s newest book is ‘13 Dreams Freud Never Had’ , but I am not a Freud fan-boy, so I don’t really care for Freud bashing either. Must be an older generational pre-internet
thing.

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