LIVING HERO

Interview with Robert Stickgold: Sleep, Memory, Creativity & Dreams

Welcome to the Inaugural Living Hero Podcast!

Sleep, Memory, Creativity and Dreams, an interview with Dr. Robert Stickgold

• How sleeps helps us learn • Creativity and stress • Meaning and insight • Deep sleep and consciousness • Sleep and meditation • Lucid dreaming • Symptoms of sleep deprivation

Enjoy the podcast! (you can download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players). The interview is 57 minutes. You can also listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below.

AND SOME BREAKING SLEEP RESEARCH NEWS: By demonstrating that worms sleep, David M. Raizen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurology, in collaboration with other researchers at the Penn Center for Sleep have not only demonstrated the ubiquity of sleep in nature, but also propose a compelling hypothesis for the purpose for sleep.

They propose that sleep is a state required for the nervous system to grow and change, there must be down time of active behavior.

Other researchers at Penn have shown that, in mammals, synaptic changes occur during sleep and that deprivation of sleep results in a disruption of these synaptic changes.

Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac: Control click or right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it when you like.

Listen whenever it’s convenient!

Want the 21-page transcript of this first Living Hero interview in PDF format? Just ask! Please use the questions/comments box on the right side bar and leave me your name and email so I can send it to you.

Wired magazine article on sleep

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [57:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (4)

jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, insight, meditation, creativity, memory, dreams, creative, sleep, stress, sleep deprivation, meaning 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Right Brain Capacity Development

As I’ve been reviewing the material for the first two Living Hero shows, I find a common thread that ought to be of interest to artists, scientists, educators, caregivers and business people alike: the capacity of our minds to recognize patterns and harness the advantage of having done so and, most importantly, how to develop this capacity.

Dr. Robert Stickgold, who studies the brain in relation to sleep, memory and dreaming, tells us that in sleep the brain processes the new information received during the day and indexes it in relation to that to which it has already has been exposed, adding to its “maps of probability” and better equipping it to recognize patterns of relationship in the future.

We are urged by Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future to develop our capacity to not only see the big picture, but also to perceive the many relationships that can make a whole coherent and satisfying, which he calls “Symphony.”

My interest is in HOW we develop these abilities. I think that one key answer lies in both physical activity and deep relaxation.

My work involves teaching people to use integrative movements, acupressure and self-massage, breathing and stress reduction techniques to foster an ideal state for creative work or performance of any kind. There’s a teacher named William Westney who uses movement in what he calls his “unmaster classes” with musicians. Actors, athletes, and body-oriented performers have always used physical warm-ups to reduce anxiety and do a better job.

I am suggesting that physical warm-ups boost performance for all kinds of work, and evidence of this has not shown up in practice enough in schools and in the workplace—yet!

Mindfulness and meditative practices also help develop your capacity for R-directed thinking and you can stay tuned here for more in-depth coverage and exploration of these subjects!

jari Uncategorized, psychology, interviews, education, future, a whole new mind, memory, dreams, creative, sleep Comments (0) » | (3 ratings)  | Email it