Unpacking the Mystery of Ramanujan's Dreams

Humbly, we humans have. Sleep, especially REM sleep and the act of dreaming, is a tenable, yet underappreciated, factor underlying many elements that form our unique human ingenuity and accomplishments, just as much as language or tool use (indeed, there is even evidence that sleep causally shapes both these latter traits as well).

Revelations and profound, life-changing insights often come when you are in a relaxed state. Thomas Edison got many of his best ideas when he took his small “naps” during the day, relaxing his body and turning off his normal awareness. For years Albert Einstein asked questions about the nature of time and space that led to his discovery of the theo

the dreaming brain was not simply recapitulating or re-creating exactly what happened to them in the maze. Rather, the dream algorithm was cherry-picking salient fragments of the prior learning experience, and then attempting to place those new experiences within the back catalog of preexisting knowledge. Like an insightful interviewer, dreaming ta

we find great dreams have always guided people to understand their place in the larger web of relations.