The secret dream laboratory
Matt Ffytche, Dominic H Ffytche
Brain October 24, 2017 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awx287 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Dream |
| Key points | The text recounts dreams attributed to an eminent neuroanatomist, including anxiety about an unexpected osteology lecture, secret nighttime cutting of medulla slices for staining, and a recurrent nightmare of the skull being removed and the brain falling out. |
Abstract
What does an eminent neuroanatomist dream of at night? The panic of being an auxiliary professor and receiving last minute instructions from the Dean to lecture on osteology? ‘Anxiety, distress … upon reviewing the bones in my memory. I list those of the hand: scaphoids, capitate, and I did not know any more’; or perhaps of secretly cutting slices of medulla for staining in a boarding house at night, or (a recurrent nightmare) that ‘they remove my skull and only skin covers the brain’—the dreamer is ‘alarmed and I awaken when I see that my brain is falling out’?