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Mind

The audiobook you listen to before bed can shape your dreams

Among a group of people who listened to different audiobooks before bed, researchers could identify what story they heard based on the descriptions of their dreams

By Moheb Costandi

11 August 2023

During sleep, your brain replays patterns of electrical activity that may assist the formation of long-term memories

Maria Korneeva/Getty Images

Listening to an audiobook before bed affects a person’s brain activity after they nod off and the content of their dreams. Better understanding this could lead to therapies that help to treat certain mental health conditions by targeting memory processing during sleep.

While a person sleeps, their brain spontaneously “replays”, or reactivates, patterns of electrical activity that are related to learning, to transfer important new information to long-term memory storage. It has been…

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