You’re late for an exam and didn’t study for it. If you weren’t boned enough, you haven’t been to class all semester. You’re frantic, trying to find your classroom, running in slow motion as time runs out.
You finally wake up in a cold sweat.
Dreams like these are terrifying, moreso than nightmares of violence and mayhem, since they reflect tangible anxieties and self-doubts. Recently there’s been some scientific inquiry into this dream trope, and The Guardian’s Jenny Rohn sums it up.
In 2014, scientists based at the Sorbonne in Paris studied a large group of students taking a medical school entrance exam, harvesting their dreams the night before and relating them to their results afterwards. About two-thirds of the respondents dreamed about the exam, with nearly 80% of these dreams being negative in some way – usually involving the dreamer being late, or not remembering the right answers. Yet those who dreamed of the exam were more likely to perform better. Therefore, the authors hypothesised that such dreams provide some sort of “cognitive gain’.
Another way to interpret these findings is to look at the divide between the conscious and subconscious minds. The conscious mind specializes in narrow, sharply-focused, attention to detail. These qualities are key to conventional academic success. While someone’s awake and learning in class, the subconscious is otherwise preoccupied. It’s focusing on the big picture, preventing the conscious mind from being overwhelmed by distractions. The rest of that seemingly idle processing power is hard at work on unrelated back-burner projects which, when completed, manifest as late-night epiphanies or earworms.
Absorbed in other matters, the subconscious’s unaware of any forthcoming tests or life events ’til it’s too late. Even though the conscious mind is fully cognizant of its responsibilities, enjoying a well-deserved break after studying for the big day, the subconscious panics. It’s not prepared and the ensuing anxiety wakes you up with a flood of self-doubt, lighting a fire under your ass for one more fevered cram session just in case.
This isn’t the first time researchers discovered the benefits of anxiety. A 2012 study by Matthew Owens, et al., published the results on the impact of anxiety on memory and test performance in The British Journal of Psychology.
“The research is exciting because it enhances our knowledge of when, specifically, anxiety can have a negative impact on taking tests. The findings also suggest that there are times when a little bit of anxiety can actually motivate you to succeed.”
On the other hand, one doesn’t always need nightmares and anxiety to succeed. If the conscious and subconscious minds work together, rather than in parallel, there can be significant benefits. A study by Erin Wamsley of the Harvard Medical School, along with a few friends, demonstrated how dreaming of performing a task enhanced the participants’s performance with the same tasks in waking life. While these dreams didn’t necessarily solve the experiment’s mazes and puzzles, the researchers found memories from prior attempts were consolidated and reorganized in dreams, enhancing performance the next time around.
Many other questions about dreams have yet to be answered by science. Take this riddle, courtesy of Neil Gaiman from DC’s Sandman.
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