Brain Bee Ideas  - Daydreaming and Awakening Within the Dream

A project proposal for young neuroscientists at the Brain Bee

Brain Bee Ideas – Daydreaming and Awakening Within the Dream

Have you ever wondered why we dream? Or why, sometimes, we wake up feeling more like ourselves after a strange night of dreams than after a whole day of studying?

In a world where everything seems to demand our attention, productivity, and performance, sleep — and especially dreaming — may be the last place where we are truly free.

Your mind dreams, your body learns

During sleep, especially in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phases, your brain replays life, experiments with new Selves, tests decisions, revisits fears, and creates impossible scenarios — all without you needing to do anything.

But what science is discovering goes even further:

* Blood circulates strategically in the brain during sleep, attending to the areas that worked hardest during the day.

* Glial cells (the brain's support cells) perform the so-called "brain washing" during deep N3 sleep, clearing out toxins and preparing the ground for new memories.

* During phasic REM, we experience more vivid dreams and can even reach states of dream awareness — known as lucid dreams.

The proposal: combining science and subjectivity

What if you could take to the Brain Bee an investigation into how dreaming helps organize who we are — emotionally, physically, and socially?

What if you could show that:

* Each phase of sleep reorganizes our symbolic selves, which we call Tensional Selves?

* In dreams, the body also learns about the space it “believes it’s in,” as we present in the concept of APUS – Extended Proprioception?

* While sleeping, the mind can reach a state called Fruição with Metacognition, where Being is felt, not just thought?

Example topics for your presentation

1. The neurophysiology of lucid dreaming and identity reconstruction during phasic REM

2. The role of glia and interoception in symbolic reorganization during N3 sleep

3. Mapping Tensional Selves across sleep stages based on known brain networks

4. How attention and the senses reorganize in dreams: from neuroscience to APUS

5. Sleep, belonging, and social networks: a symbiotic critique via **HQS – Human Quorum Sensing**

Why does this matter?

Because sleep is not just biology — it's also a sense of life. And maybe the best way to understand who we are is not just staying awake and focused, but also learning how to wake up within our own dreams.

Invitation

If you’re preparing a presentation for the Brain Bee, consider looking at the brain not only as a machine, but as the living territory where the experience of *Being* is built.

Dream your research.

Then, wake up with it — on stage.