The study’s findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, underscore just how important sleep is to our memory and mental function.
It doesn’t even need to be a deep sleep, as the researchers found when they monitored the brain activity of the students while they slept. Although the deep slumber known as rapid eye movement (REM) is most closely associated with dreaming, the students’ dreaming and learning occurred after as little as one minute of non-REM sleep.
The type of learning that occurs while you dream can be illustrated by the classic dream that many people have in which they show up for an exam that they haven’t studied for, Stickgold says.
“When you’re in school—especially college—there’s this ongoing sense that you haven’t done enough,” he says. “Maybe you didn’t make it to a lecture, or you had a paper due in three days that you hadn’t started, so you’re laying down memories that say, ‘I haven’t done anything that I need to do.’”
When someone has the exam dream (or nightmare), he says, “Your brain is taking the knowledge of what happened to help you behave differently in the future.”
You may be able to harness the dream power displayed in the study to perform better in your everyday life, Breus says.
“If you’re studying something tough, get the basics down and take a nap. If you dream about it, you will probably understand it better,” he says. “Or, go to bed a little earlier the night before, wake up early, review the material, and then take a quick nap to solidify your understanding.”
That’s good advice, says Rafael Pelayo, MD, an associate professor of sleep medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, in Palo Alto, Calif.
“Instead of cramming, study intensely, catch a nap, and then maybe do some more studying,” he says. “A nap may be a good tool to enhance your ability to remember information.”
