See Reading Frames coauthor Robert Stickgold discuss the relationship between sleeping, dreaming, and memory.

Ferreting out the biological function of dreaming is a frontier in neuroscience.

Researchers are experimenting with a variety of tools, from brain stimulation to audiovisual equipment, to try to take control of the sleeping brain.

Meet some of the people featured in the December 2020 issue of The Scientist.

The scenarios that run through our sleeping brains may help us explore possible solutions to concerns from our waking lives.

Technologies such as noninvasive brain stimulation and virtual reality gaming offer insights into how dreams arise and what functions they might serve.

In mice, the brain’s main glial cell type exhibits distinctive patterns of activity across the sleep-wake cycle and influences the response to sleep deprivation.

Accumulation of the protein was more likely to be found in the brains of people who slept less well years earlier, according to a new study.

The Stanford University researcher charted the human sleep cycle and characterized numerous sleep disorders.

The activation of young brain cells in adult mice is necessary not just for forming memories, but consolidating them during rapid eye movement sleep, a study shows.

The gene, aquaporin-4, is critical in rodents for the cerebrospinal fluid bath the brain gets during sleep. It’s now also tied to slow wave electrical activity during deep sleep in people.

After an accident as a teenager, he developed the disorder. He then studied the brain to better understand his own seizures, and now plans to sail around the world to show others with the condition how to push their limits.

From 1969 to 1988, 25,000 infants were born early each year as a result of hot weather, and with global warming pushing temperatures higher, more babies will be at risk for early birth.

Habits such as napping might influence how humans cope with extreme environments, such as those at a polar research facility in winter.

This newly described behavior occurs spontaneously, but can be modulated by food availability, temperature, and the size of the chambers.

During deep sleep, rhythmic pulses of cerebrospinal fluid are coupled with slow waves of electrical activity and fluctuating blood levels in the human brain.

The animals showed changes in both slow wave and rapid eye movement sleep.

Scientists previously thought cortical neurons remained silent during delta waves, but new evidence from rats shows some cells fire in a pattern reflective of memorizing a task.

“Short sleeper” mice engineered to have the same sequence in the gene sleep less but show the same performance on memory tests as animals that sleep a normal amount.