Dreams Are Emotion-Driven

We explore the relationship between dreams and emotions within the human brain. Human emotions play an important role in dreams, something that has long provided clues to what dreams mean--at least with regard to their general significance. This involvement of emotions helps to explain how towering emotions can get aroused in dreams, something that accounts for all manner of nightmares, including recurring nightmares and night-time PTSD flashbacks. Within this context, it seems likely that dreams can be beneficial, not only by providing what amounts to therapy for certain sleep disorders following trauma, but also by providing the equivalent of therapy in less stressful situations.

The book Dreamworld explains much of the mystery about dreams. In the process, it provides a sound, appealing, and easily readable account of how the brain works, something useful for everyone interested in the brain and mind. At a more advanced level, in later chapters Dreamworld breaks new ground in the dream-related areas of sleep, emotions, memory, dreaming consciousness, and other matters of interest to psychologists, neurologists, and students of the brain. In sum, Dreamworld provides a sound well-written overview of what brain science has discovered about dreams and related matters in recent decades, giving its readers a fresh and current view of both the sleeping brain and dreams.

Jonathan Leonard has long had an abiding interest in how the human brain works. For most of his life, however, there was little chance to find out—partly because information was lacking and partly because he was doing other things. Exposure to current brain science came in 1998, when he did a Harvard Magazine cover story on J. Allan Hobson, a Harvard professor, psychiatrist, and noted brain scientist who had done pioneering research on dreams. Leonard wound up writing a book with Hobson (Out of Its Mind, 2001) on the brain science of mental ills and the need to reform US mental health care; he also wrote a number of websites that provided the basis for a small business; and a few years later he set out to write a book on what brain science had discovered about dreams. The result was Dreamworld (2009), which provides a broad reporter’s overview not only of brain science and dreams but also of what brain science has learned recently about sleep, emotions, memory, consciousness, and how they all operate within the brain. Recognizing much of this as a major advance in human knowledge that has not been spread about effectively, he is currently seeking to focus attention upon this information.

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