While it may be impossible to wake up a rat, hand it a notebook, and have it write a bleary-eyed account of its dreams, scientists can instead try to go to the source. Matthew Wilson is just one of those scientists. As a neuroscientists, he’s more interested in what is happening inside the brain during sleep, and how it compares to their brain activity while they’re awake. Using these sets of data, he can begin to deduce what an animal is dreaming about.
More from this series: Mind after Midnight

Recorded June 2011; Posted October 2011