Understanding Sleep and Dreaming

An updated edition of Moorcroft's 2003 volume, this new work reflects recent scientific advances in the area of sleep and disorders. As in the previous book, Understanding Sleep and Dreaming, this new edition serves as a compact overview for now sleep experts, covering physiological sleep mechanisms, brain function, psychological ramifications of sleep, dimensions of dreaming, and clinical disorders associated with sleep. It is accessibly written with specially boxed material that enhances the text. It also offers a good foundation for those who will continue sleep studies, while at the same time offering enough information for those who will apply this knowledge in other ways such as clinicians private practices or researchers. It is an excellent text for courses on sleep at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The section on sleep labs will show how computers have replaced former models of data collection and storage; includes the new area of the genetics of sleep; add a new box on teen sleep; insert a new box on the emerging information about how technology use affects sleep; emphasize the controversy over rampart, wide-spread sleep deprivation; and include a new box covering the connection between sleep loss and weight gain. Additional inclusions might incorporate current 'hot topics,' such as the effect of shift work on sleep, sleep problems in adolescents, and nightmare treatment for people suffering from PTSD.


William H. Moorcroft received his Ph.D. in psychobiology from Princeton University. He started a sleep research laboratory at Luther College in which he studied various aspects of sleep and dreaming. Since his retirement from teaching and research he shifted into a clinical practice of helping people with insomnia, bad dreams and nightmares, and young children with sleep problems by changing thoughts and behaviors rather than drugs. To date he has helped close to 500 people to sleep better. Dr. Moorcroft continues to study, lecture about, write about, and treat sleep, dreaming, and sleep disorders.