The Oracle of Night The History and Science of Dreams [Audiobook]

From the earliest cave paintings - where Sidarta Ribeiro locates a key to humankind's first dreams and how they contributed to our capacity to perceive past and future and our ability to conceive of the existence of souls and spirits - to today's cutting-edge scientific research, Ribeiro arrives at 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. He explains 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 elucidated by contemporary research. Accessible, authoritative, and fascinating, The Oracle of Night gives us a wholly new way to understand this most basic of human experiences.