Working while you sleep?

Crap, this means I have to admit that my wife might have been right! Guess she does need her sleep, and according to this, it might even help you sort the world out! Cool. Although, on the other hand this kinda sucks... This means we never truly get to rest... Even while you sleep, your brain is still hard at work. No wonder we like to drink sometimes!

They start of the article with:
"Ever wondered why sleeping on a problem works? It seems that as well as strengthening our memories, sleep also helps us to extract themes and rules from the masses of information we soak up during the day."

Damn, that explains alot... Course what about dreams? Where does that play into this? I don't know about you, but some of the dreams if not most of them, have had very little to do with my experiences of the day. Most of my dreams are pretty off the wall, and tend to be quite "Enjoyable" lol....

Then the article ends with:
"Sleep helps us extract rules from our experiences, says Stickgold. It's like knowing the difference between dogs and cats, he says, even if it is hard to explain."

Ok, this is just funny. Basically, if it were not for sleep, you would not be able to tell the difference between dogs and cats? I'll just let you use your imagination to come up with other items you might not be able to tell the difference between without sleep given that example...

In all seriousness though, this does seem to explain how you can wake up in the morning and be completely sure of how to "fix" or how you can "Clearly" visualize the answer to something you were working on before.

Here is the link to the actual article..

While you slumber, your brain puts the world in order - being-human - 22 February 2007 - New Scientist Environment