You Snooze, You Win!
~ The Character of Albus Dumbledore singing praises of dreams in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.
Did you know that there are scientists devoted to studying sleeping and dreaming? They try to unravel the mysteries of what happens in our brains when we snooze. In fact, they even question why we sleep! And they have come up with a theory that napping may make us smarter and dreaming may make us more creative.
The Sleep Experiment
In an experiment people were given word puzzles to solve. Some participants were allowed to sleep between sessions and some were not. The results were astounding and flew in the face of the old adage "you snooze, you lose!"
The group that was allowed to nap did much better than the group that stayed awake between sessions. They were able to make connections between seemingly unrelated things that the “awake” group could not make. This improvement in their scores came when they slept for over an hour, meaning that they had entered REM sleep (the phase associated with dreaming - see Notes).
Brain Refresh
A separate study showed that falling in to a deeper non-REM (i.e. dreamless) sleep acts like a clearinghouse of sorts. It moves events and facts stored in short-term memory areas of the brain (the hippocampus) to long-term memory areas (the cortex). The scientists conducting this research concluded that this means sleeping before an important activity is as important as sleeping after it. Dreamless sleep allows the brain to absorb better and retain longer.
So while the dream-phase of sleep is good for making connections between seemingly unrelated things, dreamless sleep is great for absorption and retention. They do warn that this may not work for everyone all the time, but it is worth sleeping over, don’t you think?
How many hours do you sleep in the night on average? Also, do you have an interesting dream you had recently that you can describe?
Wow, that's really neat! Good article!
Wow!!
awesome!
I dreamt that I turned into a grape once. Werd
that is amazing all of a sudden i love to sleep even more
i sleep 8 to 10 hours a day
I love how the article started with a quote from Harry Potter. Great article!
Sleeping is amazing. It makes you not tired. But if you don`t, you could die.
Sleep is critical to hard work.
I dont sleep much or when I do I dont sleep very well...the amount of energy needed to be healthy
depends on your body. Breathing practices can help relax your mind so that sleep comes easier though.
I sleep about 7.5 to 8 hours, but considering all the stuff I do that's pretty good. I dream a lot but I never remember what I dream. Well, this morning I woke up remembering that I dreamed about eating raisins...
I sleep about 9.5 to 10 hours. I once had a strange dream about marbles and police. ????
I probably sleep for about nine hours per night. I can't remember my dreams unless I write them down, though.
I usually sleep 9 hours.
I never dream, except once every few months.
It's pretty amazing how sleeping and dreaming can be so helpful.
I sleep an average of 9 hours a day
That is amazing. I think it is awesome having scientists who study sleeping and dreaming.
I sleep average 9 hours a day.
Sleeping can provide a lot to kids who do not pay attention in class. I sleep average 8 hours a day.
Wow! That's amazing! I've developed a new strategy now. Every day before a big math test, I'm going to take a nap in class!
I don't think thats a good idea, but hey get detention if you want. So Detention or an A+?