*THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* What is a dream? Why do we dream? How do our bodies and minds use dreams? These questions are the starting point for this unprecedented, astonishing study of the role and significance of dreams, from the beginning of human history. An investigation on the grand scale, encompassing literature, anthropology, religion, and science, it articulates the essential place dreams occupy in human culture, and how they functioned as the catalyst that compelled us to transform our earthly habitat into a human world. From the earliest cave paintings - where the author finds a key to humankind's first dreams, which contributed to our capacity to perceive past and future - to cutting-edge scientific research, Ribeiro arrives at startling and revolutionary conclusions about the role of dreams in human existence and evolution. He explores the advances that contemporary neuroscience, biochemistry and psychology have made into the connections between sleep, dreams, and learning, before revealing what dreams have taught us about the neural basis of memory and the transformation of memory in recall. And he makes clear that the earliest insight into dreams as oracular has been confirmed by contemporary research. Accessible, authoritative, and fascinating from first to last, The Oracle of Night gives us a wholly new way to understand this most basic of human experiences.

*THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* What is a dream? Why do we dream? How do our bodies and minds use dreams? These questions are the starting point for this unprecedented, astonishing study of the role and significance of dreams, from the beginning of human history. An investigation on the grand scale, encompassing literature, anthropology, religion, and science, it articulates the essential place dreams occupy in human culture, and how they functioned as the catalyst that compelled us to transform our earthly habitat into a human world. From the earliest cave paintings - where the author finds a key to humankind's first dreams, which contributed to our capacity to perceive past and future - to cutting-edge scientific research, Ribeiro arrives at startling and revolutionary conclusions about the role of dreams in human existence and evolution. He explores the advances that contemporary neuroscience, biochemistry and psychology have made into the connections between sleep, dreams, and learning, before revealing what dreams have taught us about the neural basis of memory and the transformation of memory in recall. And he makes clear that the earliest insight into dreams as oracular has been confirmed by contemporary research. Accessible, authoritative, and fascinating from first to last, The Oracle of Night gives us a wholly new way to understand this most basic of human experiences.

This book focuses on recent advances and future trends in the methods and applications of technologies that are used in neuroscience for the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of neurological diseases and conditions or for the improvement of quality of life. The editors have assembled contributions from a range of international experts, to bring together key topics in neurotechnology, neuroengineering, and neurorehabilitation. The book explores biomedical signal processing, neuroimaging acquisition and analysis, computational intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, biometrics, machine learning and neurorobotics, human machine interaction, mobile apps and discusses ways in which these neural technologies can be used as diagnostic tools, research methods, treatment modalities, as well as in devices and apps in everyday life. This cross-disciplinary topic is of particular interest to researchers and professionals with a background in neuroscience-related disciplines and neurotechnology, but also touches on a wide range of other fields including biomedical engineering, AI, medicine, healthcare, security and industry, among others.

How do brains learn? Expression of a plasticity-related immediate early gene (IEG) was mapped to investigate the neural mechanisms of song memorization in canaries and the role of sleep for memory consolidation in rats. Chapter one shows that a song-responsive forebrain nucleus carries a topographic representation of the syllabic repertoire. This representation is tuned to natural stimuli, can be modified by experience, and depends on attention. Chapter two demonstrates that sleep can either increase or decrease IEG expression in the brain, depending on whether the animal experienced novel stimuli during the preceding waking period. Chapter three presents an effort to understand what thoughts are. It is hypothesized that a thought is a self-propagated wave of electrical activity along a particular recursive trajectory in the neuronal matrix. This hypothesis is used to build a plausible historical narrative of the coevolution of brains and thoughts, from their ancient origin in the Precambrian to the present.