Mind, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 13, 2013

Why Some Remember Dreams, Others Don't

People who tend to remember their dreams also respond more strongly than others to hearing their name when they're awake, new research suggests. Everyone dreams during sleep, but not everyone recalls the mental escapade the next day, and scientists aren't sure why some people remember more than others. To find...

Aug 29, 2013

A Dream Deferred: America's Changing View of Civil Rights

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in front of more than 250,000 protesters in Washington, D.C., and called for the end of racial discrimination in the United States in his iconic I Have a Dream speech. The political rally, which became known as the...

Sep 16, 2013

How Dreams Form: Roots of Bizarre Imagery Revealed

Even people with a rare brain disorder that leaves their minds incapable of spontaneous thought and apathetic during the day have dreams at night, new research finds. But the study, published Sept. 11 in the journal Brain, also showed these dreams were devoid of the bizarre, emotional and complex elements...

Sep 17, 2013

What the World Dreams About: Mind-Bending App to Find Out

The bizarre tales that flow through the sleeping mind vanish, as though they never happened, soon after a person awakes. But a new app aims to keep dreams alive — helping people remember, document and share their dreams — while building a large and growing database of snooze stories from...

May 11, 2014

Brain Zaps Can Trigger Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams, in which people are aware of and can control their dreams, are rare. But now scientists have found they can induce this weird state of mind in people by zapping their brains with a specific frequency of electricity. I never thought this would work, said study researcher Dr....

Jul 3, 2014

How Magic Mushrooms Really 'Expand the Mind'

Your brain on psychedelic drugs looks similar to your brain when you're dreaming, suggests a new study that may also explain why people on psychedelics feel they are expanding their mind. In the study, the researchers scanned the brains of 15 people before and after they received an injection of...

Jul 10, 2014

What People Choose to Dream About: Sex and Flying

Trying to fly and having sex are the two most popular activities that lucid dreamers — people who are aware that they are dreaming, and can control their dreams to a certain extent — aim to do in their dreams, according to a new study. The researchers surveyed about 570...

Aug 14, 2014

Here's One Thing That Makes Lucid Dreamers Different from Others

People who have lucid dreams may generally be more insightful than other people, a new study suggests. In lucid dreams, people are aware that they are dreaming. They sometimes realize this because something in the dream world doesn't make sense. This may mean that lucid dreamers have insight into their...

Nov 26, 2014

Dreams of Murder May Signal Real-Life Aggression

People who dream about murder may be more aggressive during waking hours, a controversial new study finds. The researchers also found that people who dream of killing others tend to be hostile, introverted and often don't get along well with others when they are awake. But other experts dispute the...

Feb 18, 2015

Daydreaming Your Stress Away Will Probably Backfire

When you mentally prepare yourself for a stressful event — like confronting your boss, or getting into a fight with your partner — do you fantasize that the problem could just disappear? Or, do your thoughts turn more toward the steps that you need to take to make it go...

Apr 13, 2015

Acting Out Dreams Is Often Early Sign of Parkinson's Disease

A rare sleep disorder that makes people act out their dreams may be an early warning of a deadly neurological illness, a new review of previous research suggests. About half of people who have a condition known as rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder will develop Parkinson's disease or a...

Aug 12, 2015

Why Your Eyes Dart Around When Dreaming

The vivid, bizarre images that infuse dreams are formed when people make the darting, rapid eye movements characteristic of a certain stage of sleep, new research suggests. The findings confirm a long-held scientific hypothesis that such rapid eye movements during sleep reflect a person viewing their dream-world in the same...

Apr 28, 2016

Do Australian Dragons Dream? Sleep Discovery Surprises Scientists

Do dragons dream? Maybe, according to new research that finds rapid eye movement (REM) and slow-wave sleep in a lizard, the Australian dragon, for the first time. The discovery suggests that these phases of sleep may be more than 100 million years older than previously realized. REM sleep is characterized...

Sep 15, 2016

Daydreaming Again? 5 Facts About the Wandering Mind

A wandering mind (Image credit: ProStockStudio/Shutterstock.com)Daydreaming sometimes gets a bad reputation: Students who don't pay attention in class end up having trouble completing coursework, and workers who spend meetings thinking about winning the lottery are probably not the most productive. But research has shown that not all daydreaming is bad....

Oct 24, 2016

Dream Control: Science and TV Explore the Weird Possibilities

Water gushes into a sink, spilling over the edge and pooling on the floor. In the middle of a suburban street, sits a figure whose head, wrapped in layers of plastic, vibrates wildly. A woman climbs off a table in a deserted operating room, searching for the baby she has...