The book “Big Dreams” by Kelly Bulkeley is surprisingly enjoyable and easy to understand. He has a knack for breaking down some heavy content into quick summaries to explain his points. Thus far, I have only read chapter 3 about the brain but I look forward to reading the whole book for my research on our next project.
The following is an abstract from the SBU library website with my own summary/response to follow:
“Abstract
‘Big dreams’ are rare but extremely vivid forms of dreaming that make a strong, lasting impact on waking consciousness. Experiences of big dreaming have played prominent roles in religious and cultural traditions throughout history. This book provides an original, evidence-based analysis of big dreams drawing on research from cognitive science and the comparative history of religions. The goal is to shed new light on the classic theory of Nietzsche, Tylor, and others that the origins of religion can be found in dreaming. This theory has always appealed to anthropologists and philosophers, but it has never been tested using current scientific research. Big Dreams is the first book to make that attempt. It builds on findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology to illuminate the dreaming‒religion connection. The book provides a mapping of four “prototypes” of big dreaming: aggressive, sexual, gravitational, and mystical. Each prototype is associated with a distinct kind of emotional and physiological arousal—a fight/flight response in a chasing nightmare, an actual orgasm in a “wet” dream, a startled sensation of vertigo in a falling dream, a joyous feeling of freedom and power in a flying dream. Scientific research on these big dream prototypes has revealed a naturalistic basis for religious beliefs arising from intensified modes of sleep and dreaming. Big Dreams looks at cross-cultural and historical cases of dreams involved in demonic seduction, prophetic vision, ritual healing, and contemplative practice to argue that Nietzsche and Tylor were essentially right—dreaming is a primal wellspring of religious experience.”
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Summary & My Response to Chapter 3: “Brain:”
This chapter provides an efficient summary of the evolution of humans and the brain. The author highlights two specific growth spurts for the brain that occurred in the evolutionary process and how this new, larger, brain has some disadvantages. Knowing these facts helps us gain a foundational understanding of the relationship between sleep and the brain.
When I read, especially anything science-related, and the author openly admits that their field does not fully understand the topic, they gain my full respect for the admission, spark excitement in me that there is still so much more to know, and a sense of reassurance that it is okay to not know. Bulkeley states, “There are three basic ways to measure the sleeping brain: electrically, chemically, and anatomically. All three dimensions of neural activity are vital to sleep, all of them are incredibly complex, and no one has a clear understanding of how they interact with each other. To put it mildly, many uncertainties remain in the neuroscience of sleep.” The most interesting takeaway for me on this topic was that humans over all other species have the most intense sleep called “paradoxical sleep (PS)”. When you think about this it is not shocking at all since we seem to use our brains at a level other species. I thought, “of course, we do!” And it opened my eyes to how important our sleep is for us to function at the heightened state in which our evolution sees fit.
Permalink to book in SBU Library Database: https://search.library.stonybrook.edu/permalink/01SUNY_STB/1m9tbf5/alma9917468942604856