The Phantom Mind

About the book

In the no-man's land between wakefulness and sleep, the ordinary rules of consciousness can break down. Dreams can spill into waking life, awareness can re-enter a dream, and the sleeping brain can awaken before the body. Sometimes cinematic visions of REM intrude into consciousness, like dreaming with your eyes open. People across the world report terrifying bedroom intruders: witches, demons, aliens, vampires, and even gigantic cats.
Harvard neuroscientist Baland Jalal explains these apparitions as the brain's attempt to make sense of the impossible, filling in the gaps to construct a new reality until we awaken and it fades. One of the world's foremost researchers of sleep paralysis, he sees it as a window into the brain's wider functions. Yet sleep paralysis is only...