2010-04-29 CNN
I Remember this the next time your loving spouse interrupts your couch coma. That little nap could help your memory. A snooze you can use. Here's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA：I've been fascinated by this whole concept of sleep. How we sleep, why we sleep, for a very long time and some new research coming out is pretty interesting stuff, saying basically that while sleep is good, dreaming is even better as far as learning thing, remembering things, synthesizing things and figuring out problems. Just fascinating stuff.
They had a series of tests and problems they presented to people. They allowed certain people to sleep after the problem was presented and other people did not get to sleep and they really tried to figure out what was happening specifically in the brain and how people would perform. First of all they found that people who got a little bit of sleep were able to figure out a lot of these problems easier and more quickly.
Now, take a look at the brain here specifically, as that brain spins around you'll see there are two areas that are really of critical importance, the frontal area in light purple and the back area in dark purple - that's called the hippocampus, the frontal area of the frontal lobes. These two areas really need to be talking to each other to solve problems.
The front area sort of analyzes problems, try to synthesize it, and the back area is where you store memories and you can recall other memories that can help you figure out the problem. When you're awake these two parts of the brain are talking to each other but there's also lots of other areas of the brain that are talking to each other, sort of makes it harder and could interfere with that communication.
When you are sleeping and even more specifically when you're dreaming those two areas seem to communicate much more easily and that's why it's easier to solve a problem or synthesize something while you're doing this. You think your brain is asleep, it's really not, it can be working on something which is why people probably are told to sleep on it. You sleep on it and all of a sudden the answer comes to you.
Now, you know, this has a lot of implications. If you're sort of mulling over a difficult problem and you simply can't seem to figure it out. Even resting for about 90 minutes or so, that can give you enough time to cycle through your stages of sleep and possibly come up with an answer. We do have five stages of sleep and it's REM sleep when your eyes are darting back and forth when you're usually dreaming and again it's that state of sleep that often is the best in terms of trying to figure out some of these problems.
Again, fascinating research, I think and hopefully helpful to anyone trying to get extra sleep and maybe solve some problems at the same time.