Harvard professor to discuss “sleep, memory and dreams”

Dr. Robert Stickgold

Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Robert Stickgold will discuss “Sleep, Memory and Dreams: Putting it All Together” when he speaks on the Furman University campus Thursday, Nov. 13 at 4:30 p.m. in Johns Hall 101.

The event, free and open to the public, is part of a special colloquium series hosted by Furman’s Psychology Department.

Stickgold, director of the medical school’s Center for Sleep and Cognition, is an internationally leading researcher investigating the cognitive functions of sleep.  His work was among the first to establish the benefit of sleep for long-term memory formation and to describe how this process might occur in the brain.

His ongoing studies continue to establish the importance of sleep for memory formation in healthy controls and the contribution of sleep disruption to memory dysfunction in clinical populations including schizophrenia, insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Stickgold is also an associate professor of psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He received his B.A. from Harvard and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both in biochemistry. Stickgold has published more than 100 scientific articles and two science fiction novels.

For information, contact the Psychology Department at 864-294-2205.