Brains in Dreamland: Scientists hope to raise the neural curtain on sleep's virtual theater

摘要

After his father's death in 1896, Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud made a momentous career change. He decided to study the mind instead of the brain. Freud began by probing his own mind, Intrigued by his conflicted feel-ings toward his late father, the scientist analyzed his own dreams, slips of the tongue, childhood memories, and episodes of forgetfulness. Freud's efforts culminated in the 1900 publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. In that book, he depicted dreams as symbolic stories in which sleepers' unconscious sexual and aggressive desires play out in disguised forms.