It turns out that a lot of what we were taught about sleep and dreaming is incorrect.  Dreams are a critical component of sleep- they serve to consolidate our memory, and improve our memory performance.

In this new paper, Drs. Tamminen, Gaskell (University of York), Payne (Notre Dame), Stickgold, and Wamsley (Harvard Medical) analyzed the ability to perform word recognition after sleep.  Two groups of 30 subjects were employed; they were asked to remember a fake word (“cathedruke”), which resembles the real word (“cathedral”).  The group that was awake recalled the word more readily than those who were able to sleep.

This is one of the reasons why my test-preparation protocol is so useful.   Having regular sleep patterns, insuring that you don’t try to cram the night before the exam, lets your brain process the information you hope to retain, as well as classify it properly.

It seems that we dream as we sleep- and not just during REM periods.   But the dream qualities are different- dreaming during REM sleep involves more memory processing than during non-REM sleep.

We also know that when we sleep, our brain processes information that we wish to retain;  we actually can determine the patterns in this information more readily.  Maybe that’s how Kekule could develop his novel idea that defined how benzene rings are configured.

Share this: