The Mystery

The function of REM sleep dreaming is still unknown. We situate our approach to understanding dream phenomenology and dream function within that part of evolutionary theory known as Costly Signaling Theory (CST). We contend that many of the signals produced by the dreaming brain can be and should be construed as 'costly signals'—emotions or mental simulations that produce daytime behavioral dispositions that are costly to the dreamer. For example, often the dreamer will appear in the dream as handicapped in some way (i.e., no clothes, no ID, no money, is under attack, being chased etc.). The dreamer, during waking life, is then influenced by the carry-over effect of the unpleasant dream content. The informational and affective content of the dream creates a mental set in the dreamer that operates during the daytime to facilitate the signaling of a 'handicapped' Self. The subtle signaling effect might be via display of the intense emotions or physical demeanor that had f

Similar to many other fields in Psychiatry, understanding sleep and dreams as biological events remain unconsolidated and a work in progress. In 'The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams', psychologist Patrick McNamara describes the neuroscience of sleep and dreams while emphasizing on the evolutionary and social significance of the two. Organized into two sections, Part I Sleep and Part II Dreams, McNamara walks through definitions, characteristics, variations and theories of sleep and dreams. He draws examples from human case studies to describe the two phenomena in relation to human anatomy, as well as citing animal studies to explain possible mechanisms. McNamara approaches sleep and dreams as physiological and social functions that can be explained within the paradigm of Darwinian evolutionary biology. In other words, sleeping and dreaming involve fitness 'trade-offs' in our social context, such that one’s 'sleep expression' centers around his or her interactio

Michelle, what would you like this podcast to be about? What I mean is that there's a realistic Michelle. What it could be, what it's probably going to be and then there's your wildest dreams kind of thing. What it could be. Well, I think to start I would really like the idea of having conversations with dream researchers that are doing really good work for a long time and it would be great to kind of collect or form like a collection of dream researchers and interviews. I've met a lot of people at conferences or visited research labs and it's just I think it would be nice to showcase all of the work that's being done. Because I think outside of our field, not many people really know that dream research is a real field of science and we're making progress.  So, do you think a lot of people still think of dreams as nothing but bizarre flux in the night kind of thing? Well, I think outside of our field maybe people don't realize how much we've learned.

Scientists are on a quest to solve one of physics’ biggest mysteries: What exactly is dark matter – the invisible substance that accounts for 85 percent of all the matter in the universe but can’t be seen even with our most advanced scientific instruments? Most scientists believe it’s made of ghostly particles that rarely bump into their surroundings; that’s why billions of dark matter particles might zip right through our bodies every second without us even noticing. Leading candidates for dark matter particles are WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) National Accelerator Laboratory is helping to build and test the LUX-ZEPLIN or LZ detector, one of the biggest and most sensitive detectors ever designed to catch hypothetical dark matter particles known as WIMPs. Identifying the building blocks of dark matter is one of the highest priorities of modern physics. Most scientists believe it’s made of ghostly particles that rarely bump int

The possible functions of endogenous DMT as a neurotransmitter or regulatory neurohormone in mammalian physiology are incompletely understood, and a matter of controversy. Its ubiquity in nature, however, suggests it may function at the biospheric level as a messenger molecule. The planetary ecosystem – sometimes romantically likened to Gaia, the feminine Mother of all life in Greek mythology – is a complex homeostatic system that is regulated and stabilized by complex feedback loops and symbiosis. These processes operate via signal transduction, the exchange of information mediated by molecular messengers. Neurotransmitters are one of many kinds of signal-transducing molecules in the body, but in ecosystems, photosynthetic plants produce a vast array of secondary products that mediate their interactions with virtually all organisms in the environment, including humans. In this talk Dennis McKenna will suggest that DMT and the ‘family’ of related tryptamines – may specifically target t