{"id":66,"date":"2010-08-18T02:01:53","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T02:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/2010\/08\/dreaming-makes-you-smarter-scientists-say.html"},"modified":"2010-08-18T02:01:53","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T02:01:53","slug":"dreaming-makes-you-smarter-scientists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2010\/08\/dreaming-makes-you-smarter-scientists-say.html","title":{"rendered":"Dreaming makes you smarter, scientists say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hippocampus.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Happy news: science continues the slow process of catching up to what active dreamers already know about the gifts of dreaming. At the recent convention of the American Psychological Association in San Diego, presenters suggested that dreaming may improve memory, enhance creativity, and help us prepare better for future events.<\/p>\n

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San Diego psychiatry professor Sara Mednick presented the findings of a study that, based on word tests, suggests that people who take naps in which they dream are notably better at creative problem-solving than those who don’t. Mednick’s careful conclusion: dreaming helps us combine ideas in new ways, and see connections between things that might otherwise seem to be unrelated.<\/div>\n
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At the same conference, Harvard psychiatrist Daniel Schachter reported that the same areas in the brain that handle memory, such as the hippocampus, show increased activity when subjects are asked to imagine future events. He allowed that dreaming may help us prepare for the future by putting together elements from our past. Schachter told National Geographic<\/a><\/em> that “when you imagine future events, you’re recombining aspects of experiences that have actually occurred.” <\/div>\n
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Active dreamers know that a great deal more is going on in dreams of the future than the Harvard psychiatrist is ready to discuss; see my recent post, “In dreams, we scout the roads ahead”.<\/a> Still, I am always grateful when scientists take even a small step towards validating what active dreamers – and most human cultures prior to the modern era – know about dreaming. <\/div>\n
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Hippocampus via <\/i>psycheducation<\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy news: science continues the slow process of catching up to what active dreamers already know about the gifts of dreaming. At the recent convention of the American Psychological Association in San Diego, presenters suggested that dreaming may improve memory, enhance creativity, and help us prepare better for future events. San Diego psychiatry professor Sara…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,30,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dreams","category-precognition","category-sleep"],"yoast_head":"\nDreaming makes you smarter, scientists say - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2010\/08\/dreaming-makes-you-smarter-scientists-say.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dreaming makes you smarter, scientists say - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Happy news: science continues the slow process of catching up to what active dreamers already know about the gifts of dreaming. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}