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Penelope A. Lewis is a neuroscientist at the University of Manchester, where she runs the Sleep and Memory Lab. She has written for a number of popular-science publications, including New Scientist, Scientific American, and BBC Focus and was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air. She's received funding mehr anzeigen from top institutes, including the Wellcome Trust, Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council, Medical Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and Unilever. She lives in Manchester, United Kingdom. weniger anzeigen

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Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
Interesting subject matter nicely researched but the overall presentation left a lot to be desired!

The chapters could have been better organised and edited.

I may revisit this title at some point or simply look up if better options are available on this fascinating area and well presented research.
½
 
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IamAleem | 12 weitere Rezensionen | Apr 21, 2017 |
This is a pretty good book brining together research and current day insights of the sleeping process. Dream are referred to, but this book is not for that kind of analysis. Dreams do process daytime events, particularly ones with a significant emotional impact,, but the question is open as to how ell this is understood.
 
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vpfluke | 12 weitere Rezensionen | Apr 1, 2014 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
It should be emphasized that this book is written for the interested layperson—so even though there is significant emphasis on neural processes and intimidating-sounding stuff like "neurotransmitters" and "acetylcholine" and "action potentials", it gets explained within the first few chapters. This means that it's potentially a little boring to people who are more familiar with the brain, but also means it's much more accessible to those who aren't!

Also of note is that this isn't a book on how to improve your sleep, but I think that much should be obvious from the title—it's about the functionality of sleep and what aspects of consciousness it contributes to. So if you're a layperson suffering from insomnia and want to improve your sleep habits, you should NOT pick up this book. But if you're the average person who wants to know more about what goes on when you're sleeping, by all means, this is the kind of book you want!

This book is divided roughly into three parts: About the brain, the brain and sleeping/dreaming, and ways to improve your sleep (either overall or to get your sleep to work for you).

The "about the brain" section is extremely basic, but it's also written clearly for the kind of information that the author is trying to get across. I admired the author on this point, since she knew exactly what the uninitiated reader needed to know to understand the rest of the book, and describes only that and nothing else. (This may be disappointing to those who wanted to know a little more about the brain, however.)

The brain and sleep/dreaming section is likely the reason why the book was bought in the first place. Like the author states several times, sleep (and dreaming!) is a rather mysterious beast that we don't know a whole lot about yet, but it seems to be exceedingly important in the functioning of memory and learning. Dreams also have some effect. The author goes into detail about a few particular studies, likely chosen to have a wow factor, since detailing a lot of research would have an unintended soporific effect. Another bonus is that there are a few highly contentious cases that the author details the arguments (and research) for and against a particular research question. It's easy to tell the side that she takes, since she goes into much more detail at that point, but I appreciate that she makes an effort to disclose both sides.

The "improving your sleep" section spans two chapters, the first on how to get your sleep to work for you, and the second on how to improve your sleep in general. I don't think there's anything particularly special in these two chapters; the latter is information that you can get from a rousing Google search, but the former is more interesting.

In the end, this book is tightly written and doesn't have a lot of extraneous material—in fact, it left me a little dissatisfied because I wanted to know more. I would have liked a little more connection between the neurological and psychological findings regarding sleep, since this book focuses mainly on the brain and less on the mind (and I know there are interesting psychological theories of sleep!); however, that may have detracted from the to-the-point quality of the book that I did enjoy. The figures and diagrams weren't the most helpful or clear (or practical, from an academic standpoint), so I eventually just stopped looking at them altogether. The author writes clearly enough that I never felt like I needed a visual explanation.
… (mehr)
 
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raistlinsshadow | 12 weitere Rezensionen | Jan 3, 2014 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
I was looking forward to reading this book but found it to be a frustrating and ultimately disappointing read. I just couldn’t figure out author Stephanie Lewis’ purpose in writing it. Too technical for a lay audience and not technical enough for a scholarly work, it reads like an introductory textbook on cognitive science---complete with chapter summaries---for students. And while there are a few interesting facts to be found, you have to slog through an awful lot of jargon-laden prose; needless charts, graphs and diagrams; and more detail than you would ever want or need to know about laboratory experiments and brain topography to get there.… (mehr)
½
 
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EAG | 12 weitere Rezensionen | Nov 3, 2013 |

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