As I was cramming last minute for my physics exam, I finally reached a point of complete saturation. My anxiety consumed me, inhibiting my ability to think clearly, and I couldn’t solve a problem set that I was sure would be on the exam the next day. As it neared 2:00 am, I debated whether or not to stay up to try and figure out the problems (which would have been a futile attempt), or to get some sleep so that I wasn’t completely exhausted during the test. Personally, I have trouble going to bed when I can’t figure out a solution; my mind is never at ease enough for me to relax and fall asleep, and numbers are the last thing I want to think about when I am lying down (I never was one for counting sheep). Eventually I decided on sleep, and slowly but surely, I was out.
I woke up early the next morning…still thinking about physics. I swear I’m not normally that nerdy, but I crave closure. I felt refreshed from my rest, and a little bit more mentally “sharp” than at 2:00 am. Sure enough, I sat at my desk, had a moment of clarity, and solved the problem within five minutes.
If this sounds all too familiar to you, there is now a theory that evolution is the culprit to this phenomenon. According to Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and dreams have evolved to be useful for us in our every day lives by helping us to solve problems. This suggests that we are actually thinking while we sleep, which isn’t so far-fetched of an idea if you consider that many cortical areas are just as active during REM sleep as they are during waking periods (covered in BIBB 109). REM has been suggested to be crucial for the transition of memory from short to long term as well, and so this process can be critical for successful studying.
According to Barrett’s theory, dreaming, which occurs during the REM process, may help us to stimulate our brain’s associative networks. Yet how can dreams help us to solve problems when they sometimes make absolutely no sense? Apparently, the lack of logic in our dreams enhances our creative problem solving skills by helping us to think from an “outside-of-the-box” perspective, which in turn allows us to make useful associations between previously “unrelated” ideas…a valuable adaptive quality.
Perhaps the answers to a variety of problems we deal with during the day are in our dreams. Don’t call Leonardo DiCaprio just yet though (an Inception reference, for those who didn’t see it), because to unlock these solutions, all you need is a “fresh” point-of-view when “conventional wisdom is the wrong way to approach the problem”, according to Barrett. So, amidst all of the studying during this first wave of mid-terms, the next time you are stuck on a problem, maybe you should take a break and sleep on it. Literally.
To read more, click the link below:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37926551/ns/health-behavior/
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