Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams

Barrett (psychology, Harvard Medical School) and McNamara (Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory, Boston U.) offer an encyclopedia on sleep and dreams that incorporates findings in sleep medicine and sleep and dream research on a range of topics. It contains alphabetical entries related to history; animal and reptilian sleep; brain stimulation; comparative sleep databases; dream content, properties, and theories; dreams and culture, art, creativity, development, fiction/literature, memory, movies, religion, therapy, trauma, individual differences, and parapsychology, sex, and consciousness. Entries also cover the evolution of sleep; experimental methodologies for studying dreams; fetal and infant sleep; sleep and genetics and hormones; lucid dreaming; metabolic syndrome; parasomnias; the philosophy and social psychology of dreams; posttraumatic stress disorder and dreams/sleep; REM sleep; sleep and culture, development, emotion, health, renal disease, and the brain; sleep apnea; sleep assessment, biology, deprivation, disorders, physiology, and theories; and the sleep-wake continuum. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Deirdre Barrett, PhD, is assistant clinical professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

Patrick McNamara, PhD, is director of the Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine, MA.