Robert Stickgold

Robert Stickgold is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. A preeminent sleep researcher, Dr. Stickgold has dedicated his life to understanding the relationship between sleep and learning. He is also a very active educator. His multiple articles in the popular press are intended to illustrate the dangers of sleep deprivation.

Stickgold was born in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard University before attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he received his doctorate in biochemistry. He worked with the prominent sleep researcher J. Allan Hobson for many years and has been known to quote Hobson's quip: "The only known function of sleep is to cure sleepiness". Stickgold's research has focused on sleep and cognition, dreaming, and conscious states. He has been a major proponent of the role of sleep in memory consolidation. Additional research has focused on dreaming. In one experiment, participants played the computer game Tetris for three days and reported dreaming about falling geometric shapes. Even patients with anterograde amnesia, who did not remember playing the game, had similar dreams as normal participants. Similar results were found in another study utilizing the video game Alpine Racer 2. Participants reported dreaming about skiing.