14 | December | 2023 | Plaid Line + PRIZM + Scottie News

By: Jafar Abdi

‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime’ is a murder-mystery novel that takes place in Swindon, England in 1988. Following the detective adventures of a young boy named Christopher Boone, we get to see everything he thinks, with the narration being in 1st person.

Christopher leads a normal life; he lives in Swindon with his father. Christopher’s father told him that his mother passed away in the hospital due to a heart attack. That being said, Christopher rejects certain things. He doesn’t like the colors yellow and brown, and he won’t eat anything that has touched another item on the same plate. He also bases his mood on the number of red and yellow cars he sees when driving to school in the morning.

Christopher had a rather happy and contented life overall until he notices Wellington, the dog of Mrs. Shears, in her front yard with his chest impaled with a garden fork. After being detained for striking a police officer, Christopher makes the decision to look into the mystery for the murder. In the process of solving the puzzle, Christopher also starts to fill in some other gaps in his own life. Where is Mr. Shears these days? Why is his father not encouraging him to look into Wellington’s passing? Christopher learns that his life isn’t what he thought it was when he finds a box on top of his father’s closet.

Overall, this book has its ups and downs. The overall mystery element was very nice and the suspense of his mother and the dog were very entertaining, but I don’t really feel like the actual story was fleshed out; it felt very rushed with an anti-climactic ending. It has a pretty generic plot but the real life examples really help it. This is a murder mystery novel worth reading though, in my opinion. 7.5/10

By: Chloe Rocha

What causes people to dream? There is a theory that dreaming helps you consolidate and analyze your thoughts. According to HealthClevelandClinic.org some people see dreams as a way to “rehearse” various different situations and challenges that a person can experience during the daytime.

Dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) cycle. During the night you cycle through this stage periodically. Studies show that someone’s brain waves during their REM cycles are almost as active as they are when they are awake. The forebrain is what generates the dreams but the brain stem is what generates REM sleep. If your brain stem is damaged then you will experience dreams but not go into REM sleep. But if it is flipped the other way, and your forebrain is damaged, then you won’t dream but you will go into REM sleep.

It is believed by experts that dreams can stem more from your imagination than from perspective. People living with post-traumatic stress disorder are more likely to experience nightmares when they are sleeping.

Most people dream every single night but they often don’t remember it every time. This is because you will be more likely to remember your dreams if you are awakened during, or just after, the dream. If you write down what you remember of your dream as soon as you wake up, that can help you start to remember them.

There is no good way to study dreams in people, simply because of the fact that the memory of the dream can fade so quickly. However, scientists believe that the relationship between space and time changes when you dream. During a dream, time may seem to last for a very long time or pass very quickly.

The neurotransmitters, or brain chemicals, is something that can have to do with the reasoning behind why dreams can be so strange sometimes. During REM sleep some neurotransmitters can be more pronounced while others are suppressed.