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Showing posts with the label sleep

Einstein's dreams - Alan Lightman


There have always been speculations about Albert Einstein getting his most inspired ideas while he was dreaming. Even though this has never been confirmed, it is true that our brain develops new connections providing insightful ideas during REM sleep, precisely when we are dreaming. Those of you who want to know more about what happens to our body and mind while we are comfortably slumbering on our beds can have a look at “Why we sleep”, a great popular science book written by Matthew Walker.
In “Einstein’s dreams” Alan Lightman, who is both a writer and a physicist, tries to figure out all the dreams that the famous Nobel prize winner could have had over the months preceding the publication of his revolutionary paper on relativity theory and specifically about the concept of time.

Why we sleep - Matthew Walker


This book is super interesting. People who like to sleep a lot will love it and those who are sleep-deprived or, even worse, boast about being able to carry a healthy and active life with only a few hours of slumber each night, well…they definitely need to read it.
Matthew Walker, a real guru on the subject, starts by explaining what sleep is, how it works and how it evolved over the aeons. You’ll get to know about sleep phases (NREM, REM, etc.), circadian rhythm, fundamental chemical reactions, how different animal species sleep and the various changes across the life span.

The last tie - Bangkok, Thailand

There are nights when falling asleep is tantamount to murder. It might just be a book that you have finished reading, or maybe an evening, a relation or an encounter. You feel that by sleeping and putting an end to the day you're untying the last bond between you and that experience. And the one thing that you definitely don't want to do is cutting that tie by means of a dream.

(Image: Le RĂªve, Pablo Picasso. 1932)