Getting a fright from a dream is very normal, but our brains don’t have a secret plan to shock us with nightmares (噩梦).

In times gone by, many people believed that dreams were a window to another world. People lived two inseparable lives: one in a waking world and the other in a dream world. They believed the dream world contained a mixture of the past and the future, and it might help people find purposes with their lives. Others saw them as a sign from the gods. No wonder some people found dreams frightening!

When scientists first studied dreams around 200 years ago, they thought dreams were a particular type of story that brains told themselves. Scientists thought it was a special language where ideas and feelings were explained using symbols and signs.

Around 100 years ago, French scientists began to study sleep by measuring the electrical activity in the brain. They found that there are two main types of sleep-rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. During REM sleep, your brain is active and the eyes roll quickly behind your eyelids. REM sleep is when we are most likely to dream. Non-REM sleep, on the other hand, is often called deep sleep. In this type, people sleep soundly and don’t typically report dreaming.

Over the past 50 years, some scientists have started to think that dreaming was a time for the brain to decide what to keep and what to throw away each day. In a sense, it’s like cleaning your room.

Lots of people wonder why dreams are frightening. The truth is that we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that all people dream, and all people think dreams can be strange, frightening and puzzling at times. We share the ability to dream with all warm-blooded animals, so it probably has an important function in keeping us healthy.

More often than not, we think the taste of food is largely to do with the way it's cooked. However, according to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, sitting and standing also affect the taste.

Lead author Dipayan Biswas, a professor from the University of South Florida in the US, looked specifically at how the vestibular（前庭的）sense, which is responsible for balance, posture（姿势）and location awareness, works with our sense of taste.

He found that standing for even a few minutes causes people to feel physical stress. Gravity pushes blood to the lower parts of the body, causing the heart to work harder. This increases the heart rate and leads to increased stress hormones（荷尔蒙）.All of these reduce sensory sensitivity, which affects taste. Our mouths fail to taste or feel temperature as well when this happens. When people experience discomfort, foods that normally taste good aren't as pleasing, says Science Daily.

Biswas gave 350 participants each a piece of biscuit and had them rate its tastiness. Those who stood while eating gave it a lower rating than those who sat in comfortable chairs. Next, Biswas and his team gave participants bite-sized cookies from a well-known local restaurant. These cookies are widely considered to be very tasty. Those who sat down to eat rated them highly. However, when the baker added extra salt, the results were opposite. Participants who stood up to eat the cookies didn't notice that the cookies tasted saltier, while those who were seated found the cookies weren't so tasty.

So if you really want to enjoy your meal, try to find yourself a comfortable seat. But if you're trying to lose weight, eating while standing could be helpful because people tend to eat less while standing.

The most hated day of the week is misunderstood. When the Boomtown Rats, an Irish band, released   “I Don’t Like Mondays” in 1979, the song became an instant hit.

What many do recognise all too well is the difficulty of gathering the energy to get out of bed on Monday mornings in order to face the week ahead. Many bosses argue that starting off the week in person in the office creates good energy. However, plenty of employees beg to differ.

A paper published by the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that people tend to be more ill-mannered on Mondays, and grow more polite as the week unfolds. The authors have diagnosed a new condition, Mondayitis, which is defined. as “a systemic illness with collections of symptoms including tiredness, light-headedness, dry mouth and headache”. These symptoms typically appear on the first working day after a period off work, which could be a weekend or a longer holiday. They can lead sufferers to call in sick, decide to work from home or, if they do show up in the office, come across as detached (冷漠的) and unavailable. Mondayitis appears to be infecting other days of the week.

However, the covid-19 pandemic has led many people to re-evaluate their work-life balance. A lawyer in London who spends weekends working on cases likes to ease into the formal workweek with an elegant breakfast in a fancy restaurant. A broader movement is promoting the idea of a four-day work week, one arrangement of which would make Monday part of the weekend. Less ambitiously, and more realistically, asocial-media campaign for   “bare-minimum Mondays” argues for a gentle start to the week.

You may have prepared or merely enjoyed a more elaborate meal than a sandwich. You may have gone for a walk in the park or simply lay in bed. Either way, you almost certainly cleared your head. When revived and spirited, you will have a fresh start.