Hey Professor Robert A. Stickgold!

Hey Professor Robert A. Stickgold, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center! You just completed a study that found dreaming about a task helps you perform better on it. Now that reading period is upon us, do you think dreaming about our exams helps us get better grades?

“I think it does. But I don’t think you can force it—someone asked me what I would tell students if they want to dream something about the night before the exam. The thing I told them is to be excited about the topic and think about it in a larger context. The brain takes new information it learns and tries to see how to file it away—it’s a connective thing. Hopefully your brain will pick up on it and you can dream about whatever you need to take the test on tomorrow.”