Interview: Penelope Lewis, Author Of 'The Secret World Of Sleep'Think of everything your brain processes in a single day: your breakfast, a stain on a book cover, a meeting at work. If you remembered all those things, your brain would reach capacity. Author and neuroscientist Penelope Lewis says sleep helps sort through the memories that are worth keeping.

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What happens in our brains while we're asleep? That's one question neuroscientist Penelope Lewis is trying to answer. She directs the Sleep and Memory Lab at the University of Manchester in England. Her new book is The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest.

Lewis joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about how sleep affects memory, and how REM sleep can affect depression.

Interview Highlights

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The plaintiff was employed as a police officer by the defendant in July, 1976.  Approximately two years later he sought a transfer to the first shift.  His application was denied, though he asserts that the applications of two white officers so to transfer were approved.  A month later the plaintiff was given a four-day suspension for his failure to report for his scheduled shift on September 16, 1978, choosing instead to attend a family picnic given by his wife's employer.  He testified that he had previously attempted to change his scheduled shift but