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How Our Brains Build Models of the World While We Sleep, Daydream and Hallucinate

Our brains are master generators of things that only exist inside our heads. Neuroscientists studying unique mental states say these processes tell us a lot about how our minds work.

Credit: VectorMine/Shutterstock

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Imagine for a moment that the world surrounding your screen is mostly the same, but feels slightly off. In this world, things appear suddenly with little or no context — like an emerging sound of a man yelling that starts out as a faint, ephemeral whisper before it swells louder and louder. Just as you’ve traced the voice to some guy you haven’t seen since high school, you suddenly feel as if you’re drifting upward, closer and closer to the surface of your original world. Here, in the foggy intersection between sleep and wake, you realize the other world was a dream.

But once you’re awake in this world, there’s no longer the sound of a man yelling. Did you dream it, or hallucinate it upon waking? Maybe someone was really there? As you try to decide which is the truth, your mind wanders to the last time this experience ...

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