Almost everybody I know who got hooked on Tetris (including myself) admits to eventually having dreams featuring those falling, spinning blocks. So how cool is it that researchers are using this phenomenon to study the role of dreaming in learning? They found that not only did the dreaming improve performance, but that this was the case even for amnesiacs who didn’t remember having played the game the previous day, but how had dreamed about it at night. It’s also neat that they report everyone having the same basic dream:
Curiously, thoughts about Tetris not associated with seeing falling pieces were more prevalent before sleep, whereas reports of images were more common during sleep. “What was most striking about the data,” the researchers write in the Science paper, “was the strong similarity in reports from different individuals.” All the subjects dreamed of pieces falling and sometimes rotating or fitting into empty spaces–and none reported seeing the picture surrounding the pieces, the scoreboard or the keyboard.
Yup, that’s the Tetris dream! [via Rebecca’s Pocket]