Dreaming Leads to Learning

It has been said that experiences are the best teachers. Whatever forms part of one’s memory is considered an experience. Thus, memory is the wellspring of knowledge. A person learns through his experiences and through the knowledge stored in his memory. One will only know that a specific action is not good if he had seen the results of that circumstance. One will not know that a specific work will make him productive if he was not able to witness that work’s result. Therefore, results must also be stored to one’s memory in order for it to be retrieved when needed. And these things, experiences and results, come from the conscious mind. What is interesting to know is that people also learn while sleeping, that is, while unconscious.

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According to the documentary of British Broadcasting Company entitled “Why Do We Dream”, it has recently been discovered that people can use their dreams in order for them to learn in their sleep. The scientist behind this breakthrough is Professor Robert Stickgold, from Harvard Medical School.

“Our brain is working on figuring out the importance and significance of events from our days, how they fit together with old events in our past, what they mean about likely events in the future. And if that processing is functional, as I believe it must be, then our dreams are telling us something about what's important to us and the meaning of the events in our lives.”

• - Professor Robert Stickgold

Professor Stickgold works on the study that would prove that dreams emphasize the importance of the past experiences of a person with regard to the current learning that a person acquires. In order to comprehensively explain it, the professor has devised an experiment that reveals how dreams affect the learning aspect of a person.

John is the subject of the experiment. He was allowed to play the game Alpine Racer II, which is a downhill skiing simulator. This game involves controlling the character on the screen by moving the player’s feet which was rested on the platform attached to the machine. Professor Stickgold is expecting that all the knowledge he gained through the game will come back in his sleep.

Once John was asleep, Professor Stickgold woke him up through the night to see the changes in his sleep. Professor Stickgold found that while the subject dreamed about the game, the dream began to draw on other memories. Through this, the professor perceived a clear link between dreams and memory. John’s late dream was that he was walking through the boot prints that some may have made in the snow.

“I have this image that what's happening is the brain is not just paying attention to the game but is trying to say, what is that like, what other memories do I have that's like that? And he thinks about moving through snow and I can just imagine the brain trying to say, so when I try to ski this next time, shall I try to do it exactly the way I did it last time?”

• - Professor Robert Stickgold

Professor Stickgold saw that as the dream try to offer learning to the dreamer about the specific game, it associates the game recently played to other memories that closely resemble it. It is the way in which dreams provide additional insight in order to help the dreamer develop skills on that particular game and come up with strategies that are helpful in playing it. As in real life, whenever people are facing a particular instance which greatly disturbs them, the difficulty penetrates the dreaming state. The dreams instinctively refer to the other memories of the dreamer that associate the currently occurring circumstance, and trace back the actions that the dreamer had already done in order for him to apply it to the latest problem.

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Consequently, when John played the ski game once again, his performance improved. This improvement proves that dreams are really central to the way we learn. Professor Stickgold believes that people are adding new experience to old memories, and thus, the birth of learning begins.

The usefulness of memory is not by the way men store and retrieve the information they have, but by the way they associate these memories with currently occurring events. By finding resemblances between the past experiences and the present ones, a person can effectively use his memory in figuring out what those events mean about his future and how he can use those information in maneuvering circumstances.

Truly, learning doesn’t stop when evening comes, it still continues during the sleeping state. People still learn while they are asleep and enhance their skills through their dreams. Dreams are also one of nature’s ways of teaching to mankind. Now, dreams can also be a great teacher of people’s lives.

“So tonight, as you enter the
wonderful world of dreams,

Lie back and let your mind take
you on the adventure of a lifetime.”

- BBC, “Why Do We Dream?” Documentary