Larry Schwartz – There aren’t many things that fascinate, frighten, sadden, intrigue, confuse, or enlighten us more than dreams. While science seems stumped about dreams, artists are inspired, creating countless books, movies, poems, paintings, dances and plays about dreams in an effort to understand more about this mysterious unconscious existence we enter when we sleep.

More than 100 years after Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, we still aren’t exactly sure what a dream really is. Science tells us that our sensory abilities (like vision, hearing, etc.) reside in various areas of the neocortex of our brains, and that during sleep these various areas fire randomly, producing illusions that seem disjointed and enigmatic. (In other words, dream-like.) Continue reading →