"The Mind at Night" provides a good starting place to learn what is known about dreaming
Studying neuroscience and having taken a psychology class, sleep is mentioned briefly in both fields, yet I was disappointed in the lack of detail covered on the topic. I considered picking up a book written by one of the lead researchers in the field over the last 40 years, but decided I wanted a much broader experience and explanation of what has been discovered and theorized about sleep and the dreams that are spawned from it.

The book accomplished what I sought out to learn, by giving me a well rounded view of the field and strong foundation of knowledge about the mind's night life to build off of it in future studies. The book strays away from narrative anecdotes but makes up for it in numerous dream reports, provided by researchers, and factual information. Overall there are several very interesting chapters that provide enough information on the subject topics to leave you satisfied if this is all a reader seeks, and they also leave intrigued readers knowledgeable enough to know where to go to continue their studies if they wish. The last chapters, particularly, do this extremely well and almost feel as though the rest of the book was written solely to set up the last couple of chapters. This illusion could be simply a consequence of the chronological style used.

"The Mind at Night" uses a short chronology in order to answer the questions "what is the purpose of sleep?" and "what is the purpose of dreaming?" It sets out to accomplish this by giving an overview of how the dream research field developed and what many of the most well known researchers provided to the field with their experiments and theories. The book begins by covering the birth of dream research, crediting the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep as that birth, and briefly mentioning the theories of dream significance and analysis of Freud and Jung. Hobson is then initially presented to the readers as the "anti-Freud" for his passionately opposing views to what Freud proposed. Hobson is repeatedly mentioned throughout the book for his relevant physiological theories and results that stay true to hard data. From here, large steps are taken in each chapter to successively progress the two questions the book set out to do. A lot time is spent explaining basics of significant physiological results that were found by Hobson and other researchers based on the relation these results have to causing dreams. This portion of the book sets up a conflict for finding answers to the initial questions; a battle between physiology and psychology is born. An analysis is developed on why the ability to dream evolved and what benefit it provides to mammals, and especially humans. The author begins preparing a second theme, defining consciousness, by discussing research that shows the actions of a person in the dream state uses the same parts of the brain as a person who is awake. The book takes a chapter here to note the importance of dreaming on human development issues, and how beneficial and important dreaming is to the psychological health of a person. This chapter is followed up by a logical explanation of the illogical narration the brain uses in the creation and development of a dream. Taking the topics from this chapter a step further, the author spends the following chapter describing how dreams can provide insight to our inner creativity. Several famous examples of this experience are provided, where a person is provided an answer to a problem they couldn't figure out or they are provided with their own creative ideas. Again, the author builds off the previous chapter on creativity to discuss how dreams can sometimes lead to an experience where the dreamer become fully aware and conscious that they're dreaming, an event called lucid dreaming. Finally, the author ties back into the second theme mentioned, consciousness, and what dreaming can tell us about our self awareness as human beings. The final pages end noting current interests and topics being researched in the dream field today.

The overall chronology is easy to follow and provides a logical connection to how each field of knowledge in dreaming was initially conceived given what was discovered about dreaming before it. The book does an extremely good job of summarizing experiments, what interesting and significant results were found in each experiment, and gives a logical overview of how researchers used each set of results to build on and design their own experiment following. The factual information is presented in a textbook style to remain straight forward, but this leads to a dry and lifeless sense of style for those portions of the book. One particular thing the author did several times throughout the book that I fount cumbersome and redundant was that the same thoughts and conclusions would often be presented several times throughout related chapters all to say the same thing and provide the same conclusion in making a point.

Despite some small flaws, the book quickly redeems itself by spending significant time developing interesting side stories on how the great experiments discussed came about. This is done in several different ways, focusing on the researcher that did the experiment, such as detailing the heated relationships they developed within the scientific community, how they came up with their idea to do their experiment, or how they got into the neuroscience and dream fields. Hobson, in particular, is noted on several occasions for his bitterness in attacking those who mentioned Freud in dream discussions.

The author developed two very important themes in this book that quietly outline the direction and the point of the chapters. The first discussed in depth was the conflict of physiology versus psychology. Hobson, notably, pushed that it was physiology at the heart of why we dream and about what we dream. The book emphasizes the contrast Solms brought backing a more Freudian approach to dreaming in stating the importance of meaning and psychology behind our dreams. The second theme that the second half of the book spends much time covering is the theory on our self awareness and consciousness. The discussions cover the gray areas of what our experiences are and how closely our waking life is to our dreaming life, bringing together physiology and psychology in trying to tackle these questions.

If you're new to neuroscience and just have an interest in the scientific roots of dreaming, this book will definitely provide a sound foundation of knowledge on these topics. For those already familiar with neuroscience and psychology will find several physiological concepts covered and explained. But given the necessity of this information to understand the significance of the experiments mentioned in this book, I found the reviews helpful. It's an interesting book if you're naturally interested in the topic, but it has its flaws. Most notably in the occasional redundancy mentioned earlier, as well as the lack of style sometimes leads to very dry reading in some of the earlier chapters. But every chapter serves its purpose in building the fundamental understanding of the topics that follow it. The dream reports included in the book are numerous and come attached with analysis and discussion of them from the researchers themselves making them all the more interesting. The book provides a very well rounded experience incorporating the point of views and theories of many researchers that have contributed over the years, and will catch you up on a majority of the most notable experiments conducted in dreaming over the last 5 decades.

Quotes
"What's crucial in dreaming is the forming and reforming of connections in various neural networks - a physiological process that in some cases reinforces older memories and in others makes new associations, thereby weaving in fresh experience that updates our mental model of ourselves and our world"

"Mind is matter"

"We dream because we have achieved consciousness"

"Dreams were never intended to be remembered in the first place, so when we do recall them, we're just getting an unintended glimpse of our brain at work in its off-line mode"

"It may seem bizarre to suggest that dreaming and waking reality are both built on illusion or that the two respective states of consciousness may be more alike than they are different, but on close examination, that perspective is grounded in scientific truth"

Very Readable Overview of Cutting Edge Dream Research
This book is one of the most interesting non-fiction books that I have read in the last few years. The subject matter (dreaming) is inherently interesting, but some of the science is complicated and theoretical. On some level, Ms. Rock has to assist the reader in understanding various parts of the brain (limbic, brain stem, pre-fontal lobe, etc.) as well as psychology (Freud and others). Much of the research that she is using is very recent, so many open issues remain. Despite these hurdles, she makes the book understandable to an interested layperson without dumbing it down too much.

I particularly enjoyed the way that she presented one approach to the study of dreams per chapter. Each chapter builds and explains the previous ones, as the research becomes more and more recent. Ms. Rock also introduces the reader to the personalities behind these cutting-edge scientists.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand the dream stage (as well as consciousness generally). It is not, however, a self-help book. Other than a few tips on lucid dreaming, it is a 'why' and 'what' book, not a 'how' book.

Excellent book
I discovered this book through reading another review, while researching journal articles on dream research. It is not only extremely informative, but well-written and includes several amusing anecdotes about the research itself. If you want a handy and readable guide to most of what is known about sleep and dreaming, then this is your book.

Great book
The book is exactly what its title says it is. History and facts from sleep research and related fields brought together, elaborated and articulated in the language comprehensible to educated layman. I didn't find the book dry at all, it was hard to put down, quite accessible and fascinating.

Perchance to dream...
"We are the stuff that dreams are made of and our little lives are rounded by a sleep." William Shakespeare

In her 200 page study, Rock has done an admirable job tracing out the history and findings of cognitive sleep research. In the process, she's endeavored to tell the story of a phenomenon that followed evolutionarily about a 140 million years ago on the phenomenon of sleep itself.

In this way, the articulated complexities of human dreams track the articulated complexities of the human brain itself. So dreams reflect the fears, anxieties, cares and hopes that are part of our daily lives. In her book, we see healthy sleep as part of a healthy psyche where our day to wounds are healed into our long standing visions of ourselves. Conversely, we also learn how unhealthy dream process can retard emotional recovery from trauma.

Thought provokingly, Rock also addresses the phenomenon of lucid dreaming wherein the dreamer takes advantage of being in a self aware dream state for creative and recreational purposes. Likewise, she discusses some great advances made by the creative thinking and boundry removal possible while one is in a dream state.

Though other reviewer comments about the turgid nature of Rock's writing are well placed, it remains true that even a poorly written book about a fascinating topic nonetheless remains fascinating particularly here wherein the writer has managed to cover a lot of ground in a relatively small space.