Mind, features and articles | Educational Science

May 31, 2018

Why Can't We Remember Our Dreams?

You spend a third of your life asleep, a good chunk of which involves dreaming. But most often, you don't remember any of your dreams. And even on those lucky days when you wake up with a memory of the dream still floating in your mind, there's a good chance...

Aug 29, 2018

Your Dreams May Come from These Two Genes

Enjoy dreaming? Two key genes may be to thank. A new study in mice finds that these dream genes are essential to that phase of slumber that brings people bizarro-world visions of taking high school math tests naked, losing teeth and soaring through the air. Without the genes, called Chrm...

Oct 17, 2018

Can Burger King's 'Nightmare King' Really Give You Bad Dreams?

This story was updated at 10:45 a.m. ET on Oct. 18. A new, limited-time-only burger at Burger King has a peculiar selling point: It's supposed to give you nightmares. Yes, Burger King's Halloween-themed Nightmare King burger is allegedly clinically proven to induce nightmares, according to a press release from the...

Apr 15, 2019

What Angry Dreams Look Like in Your Brain

How were your dreams last night? By analyzing brain activity, scientists may be able to answer that question for you — especially if you had an angry dream. New research finds that a signature pattern of brain activity can reveal whether there was anger in a person's dreams. In particular,...

Jul 1, 2019

Near-Death Experiences May Stem from the Brain Blending Waking and Dreaming States, Study Suggests

About 10% of people report having mystical near-death experiences, such as out-of-body sensations, according to a new study involving participants from nearly three dozen countries. What's more, although the exact cause of these experiences remains a mystery, the authors say the phenomenon may be tied to certain sleep abnormalities. The...

Jan 19, 2020

Do Dreams Really Reveal Our Deepest Secrets?

You jolt awake in the middle of the night, your heart pounding. It takes you a moment to realize that, no, you didn't just rush out for a job interview wearing nothing but a bath towel. Depending on which dream interpretation dictionary you consult, you might find that your dream...

Sep 25, 2020

Dream-shaping tech from MIT channels suggestions into your dreams

MIT scientists have figured out how to manipulate your dreams by combining an app with a sleep-tracking device called Dormio. In their new study, the researchers were able to insert certain topics into a person's dreams, with some pretty bizarre outcomes. To do so, the researchers at MIT Media Lab's...

Feb 18, 2021

Lucid dreamers can hear and answer questions while still asleep, scientists find

Scientists have successfully talked to a sleeping person in real-time by invading their dreams, a new study shows. The researchers say it's like trying to communicate with an astronaut on another world. Dreamers can follow instructions, solve simple math problems and answer yes-no questions without ever waking up, according to...

Mar 25, 2021

Do octopuses dream of 8-armed sheep? New study hints at human-like sleep cycle in cephalopods

When octopuses snooze on the seafloor, their skin sometimes pulses with an array of colors, and at other times, they become pale and plain. These alternating patterns mark two distinct stages of the octopus sleep cycle, a small study suggests. During active sleep, when an octopus's skin ripples with dazzling...

Jul 19, 2021

'Alien abduction' stories may come from lucid dreaming, study hints

Lucid dreaming, in which people are partially aware and can control their dreams during sleep, could explain so-called alien abduction stories, a study suggests. Claims of such abductions date to the 19th century; the circumstances of the kidnappings often sound dreamlike and trigger feelings of terror and paralysis. Certain dream...

Feb 7, 2019

How Does Consciousness Arise in the Brain?

Humans have learned to travel through space, eradicate diseases and understand nature at the breathtakingly tiny level of fundamental particles. Yet we have no idea how consciousness — our ability to experience and learn about the world in this way and report it to others — arises in the brain....

Jul 5, 2019

How Can You Tell if Someone (or Something) Is Conscious?

How can you know that any animal, other human beings, or anything that seems conscious, isn't just faking it? Does it enjoy an internal subjective experience, complete with sensations and emotions like hunger, joy, or sadness? After all, the only consciousness you can know with certainty is your own. Everything...

Oct 16, 2019

Why Computers Will Never Be Truly Conscious

Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently...

Nov 11, 2019

Why Can't Science Explain Consciousness?

Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 billion cells — known as neurons — each connected to 10,000...

Jan 15, 2020

Does Consciousness Pervade the Universe?

One of science's most challenging problems is a question that can be stated easily: Where does consciousness come from? In his new book Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, philosopher Philip Goff considers a radical perspective: What if consciousness is not something special that the brain does...