Mind, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 11, 2010

Mind Wandering May Lead to a Bad Mood

For the sake of your own happiness, don't let your mind wander while reading this article. Setting the mind adrift from the here and now may lead to a worse mood regardless of whether the daydreams or thoughts are pleasant ones, researchers say. In fact, a wandering mind had a...

Oct 26, 2011

Alien Abductions May Be Vivid Dreams, Study Shows

Editor's Note: This article was updated on 10/27/2011 at 10 a.m. ET to clarify the study's methods and findings. Researchers say they have conducted the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind. In a sleep study by the...

Oct 27, 2011

Brain Scans Offer Peek Into People's Dreams

It's not quite Inception, but new research has allowed scientists to read some people as they dream. Using brain imaging, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany said they were able to compare the brain activity of lucid dreamers as they entertained the same thoughts awake and...

Dec 2, 2011

7 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams

Dream Scape (Image credit: Stockxpert)You are getting sleepy, very sleepy. When your head hits the pillow it’s lights out for the brain and body, right? Not if you consider the brain cells that must fire to produce the sometimes vivid and sometimes downright haunted dreams that take place during the...

Dec 16, 2011

Dreams Do Discriminate: Racial Makeup Mimics Real Life

Here's a new version of the old question Do you dream in color? What color are the people in your dreams? A new study finds that the racial makeup of dreams tends to match up with the proportion of different races people run into in their daily lives. A person's...

Dec 21, 2011

Visions of Angels Described in Bible May Have Been Lucid Dreams

Sleep researchers say they have established that many of the visions of angels and other religious encounters described in the Bible were likely the products of spontaneous lucid dreams. In a sleep study by the Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, 30 volunteers were instructed to perform a series...

Feb 8, 2012

What Do Babies Dream About?

Nothing appears more peaceful than a sleeping baby. But behind that serene little expression, are fantastic dramas unfolding, like theater performances behind closed stage curtains? Or is the stage vacant? According to the psychologist David Foulkes, one of the world's leading experts on pediatric dreaming, people often mistakenly equate their...

Mar 16, 2012

Near-Death Experiences are Lucid Dreams, Experiment Finds

In a new exercise by a California organization that studies lucid dreaming, volunteers have been conditioned to dream near-death experiences, including the classic scenario of flying toward a light at the end of a tunnel. The researchers say their experiment demonstrates that these heavenly visions must be products of the...

Mar 16, 2012

Daydreaming Is Good for the Mind

Catch yourself daydreaming while washing the dishes again? If this happens often you probably have a pretty capable working memory, new research suggests. This mind wandering, it seems, actually gives your working memory a workout. Working memory is the mental work space that allows the brain to juggle multiple thoughts...

Apr 27, 2012

5 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams

When your head hits the pillow, for many it's lights out for the conscious part of you. But the cells firing in your brain are very much awake, sparking enough energy to produce the sometimes vivid and sometimes downright haunted dreams that take place during the rapid-eye-movement stage of your...

Jul 27, 2012

Lucid Dreamers Offer Clues to Consciousness

Lucid dreamers, people who can deliberately control their dreams during sleep, have long fascinated scientists. And now brain scans of those self-aware sleepers could offer insight into the seat of self-reflection in the mind. It is difficult to get a full picture of what goes on in the brain when...

Sep 5, 2012

Scientists 'Engineer' Dreams in Rats

The dream of modifying a person's dreams has just gotten a step closer, as MIT scientists were able to manipulate what lab rats saw in their sleep using audio cues. Scientists have known that during sleep, a part of the brain called the hippocampus replays the day's events in a...

Nov 12, 2012

The Science Behind Our Strange, Spooky Dreams

The realm of sleep and dreams has long been associated with strangeness: omens or symbols, unconscious impulses and fears. But this sometimes disturbing world of inner turmoil, fears and desires is grounded in our day-to-day experience, sleep researchers say. The structure and content of thinking looks very much like the...

Apr 4, 2013

Computers Can 'See' People's Dreams

A computer can predict what you're dreaming about based on brain wave activity, new research suggests. By measuring people's brain activity during waking moments, researchers were able to pick out the signatures of specific dream imagery — such as keys or a bed — while the dreamer was asleep. We...

May 30, 2013

Dream On Me Recalls Children's Products

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Dream On Me Inc., of South Plainfield, N.J., announced a voluntary recall of the following children's bath seats and bed rails. Product: About 50,000 Dream On Me Bath Seats Hazard: The bath seats fail to meet federal safety standards, including the...