The New Science of Dreaming

Konkoly’s voice crackles over the monitor. “Can you tell me everything you remember about your dreams and experiences?” I recount as much as I can, fuzzy from the sleep, and then stumble off to my hotel for the night—where, in the morning, I wake up with the sense of having dreamed many times over. All I can remember is the kind of dream where I’m scheduling plane flights, penciling on calendars, memorizing dates.Back at the lab, we look at the rainbow of electrode readings from last night, where my brain waves collapse into the slow waves of deep sleep. From a first look, it appears that the moments when I responded to the stimuli were moments when I awakened briefly, rather than when I was fully asleep. But the study is only at its beginning. I am the 11th sleeper in this experiment, with 40 left to go.Is there really a singular purpose to dreams? I ask Konkoly. She sits back in her chair, hugging her knees against her chest, and thinks. What we refer to as dreaming, as if it were all one thing, is really many, she speculates. Nightmares, recurring dreams, dreams of embarrassment, and dreams of flying—each might have a different purpose, still unknown to us. We look back at the screen. Somewhere in there is the moment where I was digging with my son, burying something, under a lawn behind a house I do not recognize.