Chasing Consciousness

Join Project Y-0 for a series of free talks and dialogues that explore the concept of consciousness and its role in our lives. These Friday night programs, co-presented by YHouse, Inc., raise questions with no easy answers.

This week’s topic: “Waking Up to Dreaming: What Sleep Can Teach Us About Consciousness”

With speaker Liza Solomonova (Centre d’études avancées en médecine du sommeil) and moderator Niko Schiff (Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Cornell Medical College)
Sleep and dreams are often thought of as passive disengaging from reality. However, there are many conscious experiences that are possible during sleep. One example is lucid dreaming, when you know that you are dreaming and you can have some control over the experience. Dreaming has also been thought of as a process by which the sleeping mind makes sense of waking experiences. This talk will examine some of the phenomena of consciousness in sleep and a possible role for sleep and dreaming in self awareness and insight.