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The Night Shift: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Sleep, Dreams, and Cognitive Renewal

Updated: Apr 8


Photo credit: Andrew Ostrovsky


Dreams are a window to our memories and healthy thinking


What if your dreams were not random, but a nightly broadcast from your brain’s memory engineering department? What if they served as the most vivid proof that your thinking maintenance system was alive, active, and working hard to wire your brain for future success?


Dreams are not idle fantasies. They are purposeful neurological events—a window into how your brain consolidates memory, builds long-term thinking patterns, and strengthens synaptic connections. Like a skilled editor rearranging scattered scenes into a compelling narrative, your brain during sleep stitches together fragmented memories to make sense of the past, prepare for the future, and sometimes, to simply keep the system running.


Yet dreaming is not just a passive process. It is deeply entangled with the same causal storytelling instinct that shapes our waking decisions through heuristics—the fast, automatic mental shortcuts that evolved to help us survive in uncertain environments. These heuristics serve us well most of the time, but they also come with a tradeoff: they fuel cognitive biases, the systematic errors that creep into our judgment and distort how we interpret cause and effect. Dreams, like biases, are evolutionary narratives—not designed for truth, but for meaning and survival.


When dreaming stops—or when sleep is shallow and fragmented—it may signal deeper dysfunction in this meaning-making process, much like a canary in the coal mine warning of hidden danger.


This article explores what dreams reveal about our minds. We begin by breaking down how thinking actually works—from neurons and synapses to hemispheric processing and memory. We then examine why sleep is essential to brain function, how it supports the cognitive infrastructure that learning relies on, and how inadequate sleep can accelerate decline. Finally, we bring the threads together with a research-based framework for understanding dreams—not as random theater, but as an evolutionary tool forged from the same neurobiological fire as our conscious thoughts.


Along the way, we offer real-world examples and evidence-based suggestions for optimizing your healthy brain, improving sleep hygiene, and understanding your dreams not as noise—but as signal.


Table of Contents:

  1. Introduction

  2. Thinking

  3. Sleeping

  4. Dreaming

  5. Dream summary and conclusion

  6. Notes


Extras - Deeper dives, Examples, and Analogies:

  • Brain biology deeper dive

  • The Flow State paradox

  • Sleep for business R&D

  • Align higher education with how we think

  • Building memory by building many synaptic connections

  • Cramming for an exam - A counterproductive memory development example

  • A cognitive bias and reasoning error analogy


These are extra resources intended to help deepen your understanding and pique your curiosity.


About the Author:  Jeff Hulett leads Personal Finance Reimagined, a decision-making and financial education platform. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides personal finance seminars. Check out his book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions.


Jeff is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM.


2. Thinking


Your brain is a marvel of biological design—86 billion neurons interconnected by more than 100 trillion synapses, working as a symphony of thought, memory, and action [i]. Neurons function as electrochemical switches, being highly specialized cells that produce signals for communication. Synapses are the active chemical networks that link them, facilitating not only the formation of thoughts but also adaptive learning through a process known as neuroplasticity. Later, we will explore other essential components of the brain, such as neurotransmitters and glial cells. Generally, the function of each fundamental brain component is quite straightforward. It is the remarkable volume and dynamism of these components that make our brains such an extraordinary device.


Neuroplasticity describes the brain’s ability to rewire itself by strengthening or pruning synaptic connections in response to experience. It is how we learn, adapt, and recover from injury. Neurons and synapses form the fundamental components of thought, such as constructing a sentence or solving a math problem. The basis for learning is the creation of new synaptic connections. Even more inspiring, neuroplasticity is lifelong—our synapses can continue to grow, evolve, and improve well into our later years, defying the old myth that "you can’t teach an old dog new tricks." Behavioral strategies, when properly implemented, can transform this myth into a blueprint for lifelong cognitive resilience. Since you are reading this article, you are an old enough "dog" to appreciate this article, but a young enough "dog" to benefit from its message. With the proper behavioral strategies, both older and younger individuals can increase synapses, enhance cognition, and potentially delay or prevent cognitive decline. [ii]


Also, while the rest of your body will weaken as you age, neuroplasticity enables a healthy brain to strengthen throughout one’s life, all the way until one dies. In fact, many philosophers and scientists relate learning to life itself.


“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

- Albert Einstein


“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

- Voltaire


Throughout this article, we explore approaches to encourage neuroplasticity and healthy brain habits. These methods help maintain a robust mind capable of adapting to life's demands, right up to the end of our days.


Let us begin with a simple exercise. Try writing your name with the opposite hand from which you normally write. It will likely feel awkward to hold the pen. Each letter will require concentration, and your penmanship may look unpolished. Now write your name with your non-dominant hand ten times in a vertical column. Notice how each attempt becomes slightly faster and more accurate. This is neuroplasticity in action. You are enabling new synaptic connections by learning something new.


Another real-world example comes from my own grooming routine. I periodically shave my face using my non-dominant (left) hand. At first, the task felt unnatural, and I made a few minor cuts. However, over time, my coordination improved significantly. Not only did I become more proficient at shaving with my left hand, but I also noticed enhanced dexterity in other activities—handling tools, typing, and tasks requiring bilateral coordination. The discomfort was a signal of learning in progress. The gains in motor control and fine manipulation are a strong indicator that synaptic growth occurred as a result.


With enough practice over weeks or months, these pathways strengthen. Many neuroscientists believe that fostering this kind of learning may reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases. [iii]


You spend much of your waking day processing information. Like the offhand writing example, some of your mental processing involves new synaptic growth. However, most of your daily cognition runs along existing, habituated pathways. Take driving, for example. For experienced drivers, it feels effortless. They have practiced it so thoroughly that the brain no longer needs deliberate focus. The act of driving runs on deeply embedded patterns. Unless the conditions change dramatically—such as navigating a detour or encountering a hazard—habit-based pathways handle the task.




Brain biology deeper dive:  Most of your daily cognitive activity happens along existing, well-worn synaptic highways. For example, driving a familiar route feels automatic for an experienced driver—it is executed from procedural memory, using the right hemisphere’s fast, sensory-driven processing. However, when you learn a new route or drive in heavy traffic, your left hemisphere engages, calling up stored knowledge, projecting future scenarios, and requiring deliberate focus. This distinction matters because new learning builds new synapses, while habituated tasks merely reuse existing ones.


Your cerebral cortex—the outermost layer of the brain—houses both the left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH). These aren’t just anatomical divisions; they reflect complementary styles of cognition:


The LH is serial, analytical, and language-based. It creates forecasts, builds logic chains, and processes tasks like budgeting or planning. Think of our LH as a logic-seeking "past → present → future" oriented serial processor - it handles:

  • Past information, often from long-term memory;

  • Current information, often from sensory-derived short-term memory; and

  • Creates future forecast information to help us make future judgments. These future judgements can be as simple as whether to turn right or left into a parking lot or as significant as buying a home.


The RH is parallel, intuitive, and sensory-driven. It handles present-moment experiences and excels at real-time coordination, like braking when a deer jumps into the road.


RH thinking evolved as a survival mechanism—fast and instinctive. LH thinking is slower but more strategic. Each hemisphere brings vital strengths, but the power lies in their collaboration, often facilitated through the corpus callosum, the superhighway physically connecting them. How these hemispheres balance during different cognitive tasks—and in different individuals—shapes the way we learn, decide, and grow. You may thank our brain’s evolution for the fact that we are alive to read this article today! Based on the driving example, a well-trained and experienced (highly habituated) driver may enable fast memory access via the RH. Other than heavy traffic or a directional decision point (a situation requiring the LH), the driver may rely upon their RH. For a deeper dive into our brain, please see our article: Inside Your Brain: The Hidden Forces Behind Every Decision You Make.  [iv]


Much of our day-to-day mental processing is more automatic. Thus, few new synaptic connections are created with habituated activity. A minority of our daily mental activities will include learning something completely new. This newly learned behavior will likely “feel” difficult and challenging. This new activity will create many new synapses, including synaptic development while we sleep. We will discuss why we sleep in the next section.



The Flow State paradox:  Reaching flow state is where our brain exists solely in the RH for an extended period of time. The flow state is where both our attention (consciousness) and cognitive resources (information needs or training) are completely in the present. The procedural memory is the primary information source for the flow state. Being in the present is synonymous with full immersion in the RH.  Some high-level athletes reach a flow state. They discuss “losing time” as the world around them slows. Bond traders, firefighters, or even a driver may reach an almost hypnotic state where they seem to lose time in their journey. Some religions call this an enlightened state or “nirvana.” In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Goedel, Escher, Bach; the author, Douglas Hofstadter, makes the comment:

“Apparently the master wants to get across the idea that (Zen) enlightened state is one where the borderlines between self and the rest of the universe are dissolved."

One would think we may always wish to reach a flow state. It turns out that reaching a flow state is the outcome of highly disciplined LH-based mental resources training. High-level athletes reach an RH-centered flow state because of their intensive LH-focused training. Fans see the RH-enabled game outcomes, but fans generally do not see the LH-oriented practice where the synapses are wired together. The flow state is generally temporary, requiring both unique internal and environmental conditions. The flow state is the ultimate outcome of the habituated brain. Thus, even if we could remain in an RH-centered flow state, we would be reducing our ability to develop new synapses. Thus, while the flow state may be “nirvana” it is our slow LH that enables a periodic visit to the flow state and provides for synaptic growth. For a deeper dive into reaching a flow state, please see our article: Soccer Brain - the making of the beautiful game.


All this mental processing sends biochemical impulses between neurons (the couplings with a greenish hue from the diagram) and is transmitted via the synaptic connection, which is the space between neurons. As transmitted via the synapses, much of the bioelectrical signals are associated with information signals generated from neurotransmitters. [v] (The neurotransmitters are represented by the yellow dots in the diagram) As generated from our cognition, there is also a small amount of a waste peptide created. This peptide is named amyloid-beta (“Aβ” is represented by the red dot in the diagram). Interestingly, the synapse is not a physical object but a gap. Information is generated when neurotransmitters either cross or do not cross this gap.

Photo Credit: Lisa Genova


This Aβ (amyloid-beta) byproduct accumulates during normal brain activity, much like how lactate (commonly misattributed as lactic acid) builds up in muscles during intense exercise. While lactate does not directly cause muscle soreness, it does reflect metabolic stress—just as Aβ reflects cognitive activity and neural metabolism. Think of Aβ as a metabolic byproduct of “exercising” the brain. Microglia, the brain’s maintenance cells, help clear Aβ from the synaptic environment. The challenge is that, under certain conditions—such as poor sleep—microglial activity may be impaired, allowing Aβ to accumulate and contribute to cognitive decline or neurodegenerative disease.


In the next section, we discuss how sleep helps the microglia. We also show how brain disease may result from inadequate sleep hygiene. We will then show how sleep is part of our thinking maintenance process, especially concerning memory consolidation and synaptic growth.


3. Sleeping


A very important reason mammals sleep, particularly humans, is to help the brain cleanse the excess Aβ built up in the synapses. The microglia do not always wholly cleanse all the Aβ. When you sleep, specifically in your deep, delta wave sleep, your brain releases spinal fluid to wash away excess Aβ and to help the microglia finish their job of cleaning out the Aβ. Human brains:

  1. Have significant neuron and synaptic capacity and

  2. They are very active in their daily usage of this mental capacity.

As such, the need for daily brain maintenance to ensure the brain’s long-term well-being is increased compared to other mammals. Not cleansing the Aβ is the basis for many brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Excess Aβ may eventually bind together to form Amyloid Plaques (“AP”). AP may eventually overwhelm the synapse and cause synaptic death. [vi] A significant amount of synaptic death will likely cause neurodegenerative disease symptoms, like Alzheimer's. Thus, sleep is a critical activity to ensure long-term brain health.

Photo Credit: Lisa Genova


In a healthy brain, some synaptic death is normal. No matter how good our sleep hygiene is, most people can expect some synaptic death throughout their lives. It has been shown that active learners are not as symptomatic of brain disease as compared to less active learners. This occurs even though the active learners' brains may present synaptic death. This enables the new synaptic activity to effectively “outrun” synaptic death by rewiring our neural network around the AP-impacted synapses. This means the volume of the new learning will generate enough new synapses to offset the effects of the synaptic death associated with AP. [vii]


Confirming research suggests that sleep hygiene, along with ongoing learning, healthy exercise, and good eating behaviors, is a critical personal mental health activity. [viii] Broad-based neuroscience literature reviews suggest that lifestyle is the critical determinant of long-term brain health. [ix] As an analogy for why good sleep hygiene and other healthy habits are important as an essential brain disease preventative, neuroscientist and author Lisa Genova said:

“Think of amyloid plaques as a lit match, at the tipping point [of brain disease], the match sets fire to the forest. Once the forest is a blaze, it doesn’t do any good to blow out the match.”

The U.S. medical industry concentrates on using drugs to treat the impaired brain after the fact. However, a more effective strategy is safeguarding the brain from inadequate sleep environments, which are more likely to cause neurodegenerative diseases in the first place. In the old days, there was a macho saying:


"I will sleep when I'm dead!"


Today's neuroscience has changed the narrative to a more accurate:


"Not sleeping will cause me to be dead!"


Another critical reason we sleep is to process our daily mental activity for the purpose of categorizing and strengthening the synaptic growth associated with daily learning. Generating synaptic connections is an associative activity. Like in the handwriting example, the muscles, balance, language, and visualization of training the offhand to write will generate new synapses. These new synapses will be associated with the existing dominant handwriting-trained neurons. Plus, the new synapses will associate with other related existing neurons. (Like neurons associated with your offhand, with holding a pen, etc.) Thus, many new directly and indirectly associated synaptic connections were made to accommodate the newly learned behavior. Sleep provides the synaptic development environment.




Sleep for business R&D: In my business, we provide start-up services to entrepreneurs. We help guide and support founders on their road to business success. I remind entrepreneurs that sleep is their single greatest R&D laboratory. It is sleep where ideas come together to create new inventions or to help innovate and evolve. Not sleeping well is like giving up your least expensive and highest-impact business resource.


Also, the volume of training for the newly learned behavior matters. As we all experience in our daily lives, the more we practice something, the better we become. This is the process of strengthening synaptic development via repetition. This is a key aspect of the neuroplastic processes to create and strengthen new neural synaptic pathways. As an important nuance, the learning associated with creating new synaptic connections is challenging. It is far easier to do something we know versus something we do not. Just like it is super challenging to learn to write with your offhand. But only traveling down the same mental road repeatedly will not create new synapses. In terms of education, new learning, and synaptic development, the necessary repetition is greatly facilitated via effective study habits. [x] Research shows that student success is associated with the building and application of effective study habits. Consider study habits as how people overcome the challenges of doing something difficult, like learning something new. One of the greatest gifts parents of young children can give is the freedom to pursue their curiosities with resources and encouragement to discover the answers to their questions. The next "deeper dive" explores the U.S. challenge of how we think is often misaligned with the current higher education process.




Align higher education with how we think:  Human brains begin with remarkably similar neuron and synapse capacity. However, the environments we grow up in—and the habits we form—diverge widely, resulting in profound neurodiversity by the time students reach age 17. While the U.S. education system requires high school graduates to be “college-ready,” the reality tells a different story.


What truly differentiates students at the college starting line is not raw cognitive potential, but the practice of effective study habits and access to environments that reinforce them. Yet many students have not yet developed the behaviors needed to succeed. College outcomes reflect this gap: most students who begin college in the U.S. do not graduate on time, earn a strong job placement, or repay their loans successfully.


Learning is less about innate ability and more about behavioral consistency and environmental support. Likelihood of college success should be evaluated on the development of study habits, which are the basis for cognitive growth and long-term success.

“Formal education must change. It needs to be brought into closer alignment with the world as it actually is, into closer harmony with the way human beings actually learn and thrive.”

- Sal Khan, Founder and CEO, Kahn Academy 


To dig deeper and consider a new way to align Higher Education with the world as it actually is and how human beings actually learn, please see our article Higher Education Reimagined.


The essence of a healthy brain life is pursuing the mastery process associated with strong synaptic connections, and then pursuing something new and challenging. In other words, work on learning something new until it goes from being a challenge to being automatic - known as "mastery learning." Then it is time for the next challenge. Your good study habits are a key enabler to mastery learning. Plus, all the while, having good sleep hygiene, along with the other healthy behaviors mentioned earlier, supports synaptic development for new learning. [xi]


In the upcoming section, the dream perspective is introduced. This perspective offers a theory on the purpose of sleep and the connection between dreams and this purpose. Like any theory, ongoing testing and literature reviews are necessary for validation.


4. Dreaming


Our days are spent performing various mental processing activities as discussed in the earlier “Thinking” section. Some of those processing activities are new and require categorization for long-term memory. It has been shown that we have different memory storage types, from the most short-term to the most long-term. [xii] Think of sleep as the means for converting our more temporary short-term memories into more permanent, recallable long-term memories. The quality of our sleep relates to 1) more efficiently processing daily experiences and 2) creating long-term memories. Importantly, sleep helps us to “connect the dots” between memories, both newer memories from the day and existing memories. The creation of additional synapses is like the connection of another network branch in our brain’s neural network. The strength of the memory and our ability to recall are based on the number of synaptic connections to like memories.




Building memory by building many synaptic connections:  If all you have ever learned about Jeff Hulett is that he wrote the article "The Night Shift: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Sleep, Dreams, and Cognitive Renewal," then you likely will not remember Jeff Hulett. However, if you have also learned that Jeff Hulett is married to Patti Hulett, Jeff has 4 children, Jeff is a behavioral economist, Jeff is a software and services company executive, Jeff leads a nonprofit, and Jeff declares himself a Christian but he left the Catholic Church; then you are much more likely to remember Jeff Hulett. Each of those disparate facts about Jeff, when committed to long-term memory, will create a separate synaptic connection. Additional synaptic connections increase the likelihood and speed of long-term memory recall.


On the flip side, lack of sleep will reduce your ability to commit those short-term memories to your synapse-connected long-term memory. Unconnected short-term memories will get crowded out by newer short-term memories and ultimately be lost.




Cramming Is a Memory Trap: Why Sleep Beats All-Nighters: Pulling an all-nighter before an exam may feel productive, but it sabotages your brain’s ability to commit what you studied to long-term memory. Without sleep, short-term memories remain unprocessed, lacking the synaptic integration required for long-term retention. These unconnected fragments are easily overwritten by new inputs and ultimately forgotten. Think of it like stacking 100 loose pages without page numbers—there is no structure, no coherence. Even if you “read” them, the story gets lost.


Sleep is when neuroplasticity goes to work, reinforcing synaptic connections and turning studied material into accessible knowledge. Without it, cramming yields scattered recall at best and forgotten facts at worst. Even well-learned material from earlier in the semester becomes harder to retrieve when the brain is sleep-deprived.


Better strategy: Attend class, study consistently, and complete final prep early enough to get a full night’s sleep before the exam. If you must choose between a few more hours of study or quality sleep, choose sleep—it is your brain’s most powerful study partner.


Neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene said [xiii]: "Sleep and learning are strongly linked. Numerous experiments show that spontaneous variations in the depth of sleep correlate with variations in performance on the next day."


Generally, your day’s experiences are captured in your short-term memory as a jumble of information that lacks the strength of connection to existing long-term memories. This is not to say that some of your day’s experiences were not connected to long-term memories. Very likely some were. But connecting an immediate experience to long-term memory requires a conscious process that is not available for most of your day’s experiences. This is because, given the extraordinary volume of sensory input received in our waking life, there are simply too many discrete experiences to process and commit to long-term memory. Therefore, your short-term memory is holding an inventory of your day’s experiences and waiting for long-term processing. The next graphic describes the dream theory: Sleep [1] is where the lion's share of synaptic processing and related neuroplastic processes occur [2]. In sleep, the experiences found in your short-term memory, many of which were created that day, are available for synapse creation [3] or synapse strengthening to associate with like neurons in long-term memory [4]. Finally, our long-term memories may be recalled in 2 ways:

  1. Via LH-focused conscious learning, one connects the dots between short-term memory consciously available to an existing long-term memory. (known as Declarative Memory)

  2. Via RH-focused subconscious tasks requiring immediate attention. This is like a flow state situation - such as a firefighter relying on instincts to make decisions about how to best fight a fire. (known as Procedural memory)

Dreams are like a window into that synaptic creation process. Imagine every discrete memory is like a picture or a short video. The collection of short-term memories is kept in an inventory but in no particular order. As a matter of practice, a dream will randomly get seeded with a single piece of information stored in short-term memory. Dreams often get seeded from a particularly salient experience or fear. Stress is a particularly good "dream seeder." From there, the dream narrative is built by rearranging the remaining information available to short-term memory to align with the seeded narrative.


Even in sleep, our brains have the amazing ability to make sense of the world, even our discrete, jumbled experiences as found in our short-term memory inventory. The brain's instinct to seek causality by storytelling is the same instinct that enables cognitive biases and related reasoning errors. N.N. Taleb is an author, philosopher, and financier. In his book The Black Swan, he observes:

"Our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of almost anything, capable of mounting explanations for all manner of phenomena."



The Brain’s Storytelling Instinct: From Dreams to Bias:  Even in sleep, your brain strives to make sense of the world. It takes fragmented, disorganized short-term memories and weaves them into coherent dream narratives. This is no random act—it reflects a powerful, evolutionarily ingrained instinct: our brain’s drive for causal storytelling.


That same instinct fuels heuristics—fast, right-hemisphere shortcuts once critical for survival. These heuristics helped our ancestors escape predators but now contribute to cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, where we overweight information that supports our existing beliefs. These mental shortcuts are efficient but can mislead, especially in modern contexts like financial decisions or politics.


Dreams mirror another reasoning error: errors of omission. In dreams, just as in biased reasoning, the brain builds stories using only parts of available information, omitting details that might change the outcome. Whether awake or asleep, our brain operates under the same evolutionary rules—favoring speed, coherence, and causality over completeness and accuracy.


Understanding this shared foundation helps explain why dreams feel meaningful and why biases persist. Both reveal the brain’s remarkable, if imperfect, effort to bring order to complexity.

The reason why our brain naturally reorders short-term memories for dreams is the same evolutionary-based mechanism as the reason why "story-telling" related confirmation bias exists. [xiv]

Also, the comparison of a "bias" or an "error" type to a dream is appropriate because a dream, like a bias or error, is not an accurate representation of reality.


Dreams are an assortment of discrete memories rearranged to tell a story. The discrete memories found in the short-term memory inventory may have occurred that day, and some may have happened in the more distant past. Even while asleep, your consciousness is observing this synaptic creation process and seeking to make sense of the jumble of pictures and short videos it perceives as your brain processes the jumbled memory inventory while sleeping. This is why dreams seem authentic and original. Dreams are a unique rendering of reordered memory snippets. Via dreams, your consciousness is viewing a window into the long-term memory creation process by observing and seeking to tell a story with the jumbled inventory of discrete short-term memories. As presented in the cramming for an exam example, think of your consciousness as viewing those 100 random pieces of paper. The dream will reorder the stack of papers in a way that tells a fanciful story.


5. Conclusion: Dreams as Signals of a Thriving Mind


Dreams are not a passive byproduct of rest—they are an active expression of the brain’s extraordinary ability to grow, adapt, and prepare us for the future. As part of our broader thinking maintenance process, dreams reveal the hidden work of synaptic development, where short-term memories are sorted, reinforced, and consolidated into long-term knowledge.


In this nightly narrative, the brain reshuffles discrete memory fragments into story-like sequences. These dream-stories are not random. They reflect our brain’s evolutionary storytelling instinct, the same system that gives rise to heuristics and sometimes cognitive biases like confirmation bias. Just as we unconsciously seek patterns while awake, our dreaming mind does the same—linking experiences into meaning.


The quality of our long-term memory and the speed of recall depend heavily on synaptic strength and volume. These are not fixed traits. They are built and reinforced through intentional learning, curiosity, and critically, adequate sleep. Sleep is not a break from cognition—it is a core input to cognition, enabling memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and even mental resilience. Without sufficient sleep, these functions falter, raising the risk of long-term cognitive decline and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.


By understanding dreams as a signal—one that reflects the health and integrity of our brain’s learning system—we gain a powerful lens on how to thrive. With deliberate study habits, consistent sleep hygiene, and a lifestyle that supports neuroplasticity, we can nurture a brain that not only remembers but grows stronger with time.


Dream well, and think deeply. Your future depends on both.

 

6. Notes

[i] Literature reviews suggest the number of neurons in the human brain is reasonably well known, at approximately 86 Billion. The number of synapses is less well-known. 100 Trillion seems to be a starting number, with some estimates suggesting well into the quadrillion. Part of the challenge of measuring synapses is agreeing upon what a synapse actually is! It does seem clear that the number of synapses is variable and is sensitive to behaviors as discussed in this article.


Hulett, Brain Model, The Curiosity Vine, 2020


[ii] There is increasing evidence in the literature that aging brains may be very plastic. This suggests behavior and habits are critical as we age to encourage neuroplastic-based synaptic development. In the referenced study, it is also suggested the neurotransmitter GABA shows signs of being helpful in increasing memory consolidation. "Our work showed that the aging brain is, contrary to a widely-held notion, more plastic than the young adult brain," says Cisneros-Franco.



[iii] Nahum, Lee, Merzenich, Principles of Neuroplasticity-Based Rehabilitation, Progress in Brain Research, Volume 207, 2013, Pages 141-171


[iv] We provide more explanation for brain biology in the following articles:


[v] We provide more explanation of neurotransmitters in the following articles:

Hulett, Origins of our tribal nature, The Curiosity Vine, 2022

Hulett, Soccer Brain - the making of the beautiful game, The Curiosity Vine, 2020

[vi] Genova, What you can do to prevent Alzheimer's, TED Talk, 2017 [vii] Snowdon, Aging and Alzheimer's disease: lessons from the Nun Study, National Library of Medicine, 1997


[viii] Much has been written about sleep hygiene and its connection to stress. Cortisol is the stress hormone. Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone that your adrenal glands produce and release. Chronic over-production of cortisol is known to have unhealthy effects, including weight gain and the onset of diabetes. Cortisol is also associated with sleep interruption. Thus, managing sleep in the context of your stress levels is important. Please see the following Cleveland Clinic suggestions for managing stress and attendant cortisol levels:


Editors, Cortisol, The Cleveland Clinic, 2022


Robert Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinology researcher, author, and Stanford University professor. Dr. Sapolsky discusses the importance of managing stress levels that cause cortisol hormone build-up. Cortisol build-up may be destructive, especially to children. Too much cortisol will interrupt thinking maintenance processes and reduce the brain's ability to create synaptic connections.


[ix] Toricelli, Pereira, Abrao, Malerba, Maia, Buck, Viel, Mechanisms of neuroplasticity and brain degeneration: strategies for protection during the aging process, Neural Regeneration Research, 16(1), 58-67, 2021


[xi] In the following article, we present our entropy and time framework. We suggest our overarching human physics-based goal is to "Fight Entropy" and we do so by pushing toward lower entropy throughout our life.




[xiv] We present our "Big 4" decision-making biases in the following article. We demonstrate how confirmation bias, along with other cognitive biases, lay the foundation for biased decision-making impact. These are the same foundational biases impacting our dreams. We cannot escape our evolution-based cognitive biases, even when we sleep!





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