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INTRODUCTION : SLEEPING BRAINS, CONSCIOUS MINDS Jennifer M. Windt THE ELUSIVENESS OF DREAMS Sleep and dreaming involve profound alterations in conscious experience, behavior, and neural processing. Altered states of waking consciousness tend to occur in the context of pathologies or require specific induction techniques, such as psychedelic substances or meditation. By contrast, dreams occur spontaneously and throughout healthy sleep. Sleep as a physiological phenomenon has been studied extensively, but its sub- jective side, including dreaming, remains strangely elusive. The dreams we sponta- neously recall upon awakening offer a tainted and highly selective view of dream activity throughout the night. Most of us rarely remember our dreams, whereas laboratory studies show that almost everyone dreams multiple times per night. Typical dreams of flying, falling, or being chased, which most people have experi- enced at some point in their lives, are often intensely emotional and subjectively feel realistic. Such dreams shape our waking convictions about what it is like to dream but what makes them memorable may be exactly what sets them apart from the majority of forgotten dreams. Timed awakenings in the sleep laboratory show that we dream much more than we remember and also that, for the most part, our dreams are different and more variable than we think: dream content is often con- tinuous with waking thoughts and concerns and overall is much less bizarre and fantastical than our most memorable dreams suggest. Dreams are also theoretically elusive, and questions that sound straightforward tend to stubbornly resist quick-and-easy answers. What do our dreams look like?