Yuval Nir, a principal researcher at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, is an internationally recognized expert on the neuroscience of sleep. With his team, he explores how brain activity during sleep states, including dreams, can be connected to awareness and responsiveness when we are awake. The innovative techniques he applies include a combination of both human and animal models in order to find basic functions as well as more complex patterns of sleep in the mammal brain. Ultimately, his Lab’s challenge is to understand the link between sleep and cognition, with the hope of explaining why healthy sleep is essential for the mind to function.