The Role of Dreams in Memory Consolidation

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

A lot of dreams are these kind of weird stories, you know, like this person was there and that person was there. When in fact, those person people would never be in the same room as you at the same time. Siddhartha's argument in that book is essentially sometimes some of those crazy scenarios will end up being true. And within certain cultures and societies, that's how people have latched onto the idea of premonition dreams.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.