Videos

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  The Mind after Midnight: Where Do You Go When You Go to Sleep?

  Full 90 Minute Program: We spend a third of our lives asleep. Every organism on Earth—from rats to dolphins to fruit flies to microorganisms—relies on sleep for its survival,...

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  Interpreting Animal Dreams

  While it may be impossible to wake up a rat, hand it a notebook, and have it write a bleary-eyed account of its dreams, scientists can instead try to go to the source. Matthew...

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  Do Lab Rats Dream of Running Mazes?

  Neuroscientists Matthew Wilson gives the audience a rare look at the activity in a rat’s brain while it runs a maze. Using that data, he then set the rat through the maze again,...

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  Getting Sleep in the Wild

  New advances in brain imaging over the years has allowed researchers to study the sleeping brains of animals. But while scientists have learned much about animal sleep patterns,...

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  Why Study Birds?

  All animals sleep in some form, what makes birds special? Why are scientists like Niels Rattenborg particularly interested in avian sleep patterns? Turns out, birds have evolved...

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  The Safety of Sitting Ducks

  Curious observers have noticed for centuries that ducks sometime sleep with one eye open, but had never really looked into why or how. Neils Rattenborg, a neurophysiologist at the...

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  What is Parasomnia?

  Parasomnias are extreme sleeping behaviors that include bizarre phenomena such as “sleep violence,” “sleep binging,” and “sleep sex.” In his treatment of patients with a...

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  The Curious Case of Kenneth Parks

  In 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks drove 14 miles to the home of his in-laws. Upon reaching their home, Parks brutally attacked them both, killing his mother-in-law. When...

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  Perchance to Dream about Tetris

  How well do you remember your dreams? Have you ever had a dream about something you were doing earlier in the day—especially if you were doing it when you nodded off? If you’re...

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  Dreams and the Resolution of the Mind

  Our mind’s eye is a space in our heads where memories, images, and sounds all come together in a roiling sea of thoughts. Given that, just how clear is the “vision” of this eye?...