Sleep On It And Become A Better Problem Solver

The title of this blog is a bit misleading, but new experiments suggest that if you've got a big decision to make, sleeping on is good advice. The study found that people did a better job of learning a game when they got some sleep afterward. The research doesn't prove that sleep will help you learn more, but it does provide evidence that your brain doesn't just rest and dream when you're asleep. It appears that the brain may also be reviewing the day's events and processing them.

You might think it is common sense that people would perform a task better after getting some sleep, but the new study is uniques because it looks at people who had a brief chance to learn something. Some slept after learning the game, others stayed awake. The research found that 80% of those who slept after learning the game were able to figure out the trick to the game, while 40% of those who stayed awake figured out the trick.

So what's going on? The brain appears to process what it's learned during sleep. It's filing it away, in an organized fashion. So the next time you learn a new task, sleep on it. According to this study, the information will be processed during sleep. The fact of the matter is that there's much more going on in our brain during sleep than just rest and dreaming. We're actually processing the events of the day and filing them in the ultimate filing cabinet, the brain.