The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep by Guy Leschziner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The concept of a deep-dive into dreamland, and the neuroscience of sleep (and sleep disorders) will never not be a compelling subject.
And the book’s primary contention, that being awake/asleep are not necessarily simple binaries but rather states that we fluctuate between-sometimes awkwardly or ‘incorrectly’ as Leschziner documents-offers a new way of thinking about how our brains work and why we sleep (or don’t).
The Oliver-Sachs/Ramachandran style tour of unusual case studies is a good choice to organize this book, although I do not think the case studies themselves are as exotic or captivating as some of the things you might come across in “Phantoms in the Brain” or “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”. This is also a dense, slow-moving book heavy on terminology and complex descriptions of synaptic exchanges and the structure and chemical makeup of neurons, some of which is very hard to picture or internalize.
That said, I think this is a book that can be appreciated by both general readers and those in the field of science and medicine. There is no ‘simple’ explanation why someone is capable of subconsciously driving their car or eating through their fridge and I prefer this style of writing to ‘scientism’ that substitutes complexity for buzzwords or simplification to the point of mischaracterizing the subject.
On a very esoteric note, I ‘think’ there is an incorrect chapter title; about halfway through the book, the Chapter titled “The Waking Effects of Coffee” is instead about compulsive sleep-eating (I don’t believe coffee comes up in the chapter a tall).
This book also saves the best for last, finishing with the latest scientific explanations for dreaming and why we even sleep at all. This book will make readers consider their own sleeping habits and whether they could treat their own nocturnal brain a bit better.
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