In January of 1999, an otherwise nonviolent man under
great stress at work brutally murdered his wife in their
backyard. He then went back to bed, awakening only when
police entered his home. He claimed to have no memory of
the event because, while his body was awake at the time,
his mind was not. He had been sleepwalking. In The
Twenty-four Hour Mind, sleep scientist Rosalind
Cartwright brings together decades of research into the
bizarre sleep disorders known as parasomnias to propose
a new theory of how the human mind works consistently
throughout waking and sleeping hours. Thanks to
increasingly sophisticated EEG and brain imaging
technologies, we now know that our minds do not simply
"turn off" during sleep. Rather, they continue to be
active, and research has indicated that one of the
primary purposes of sleep is to aid in regulating
emotions and processing experiences that occur during
preceding waking hours.As such, when sleep is
neurologically or genetically impaired or just too
short, the processes that good sleep facilitates--those
that usually have a positive effect on our mood and
performance--can short circuit, with negative results
that occasionally reach tragic proportions. Examining
the interactions between conscious and unconscious forms
of thinking as they proceed throughout the cycles of
sleeping, dreaming, and waking, Cartwright demystifies
the inner workings of the human mind that trigger sleep
problems, how researchers are working to control them,
and how they can apply what they learn to further our
understanding of the brain. Along the way, she provides
a lively account of the history of sleep research and
the birth of sleep medicine that will initiate readers
into this fascinating field of inquiry and the
far-reaching implications it will have on the future of
neuroscience. The Twenty-four Hour Mind offers a unique
look at a relatively new area of study that will be of
interest to those with and without sleep problems, as
well as anyone captivated by the mysteries of the
brain--and what sleep continues to teach us about the
waking mind. |
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