If you’re a college student thinking of cramming for finals, you might want to adopt a more restful strategy.

Scientists have shown that sleep plays a crucial role in memory. As the brain goes down for the night – or even for a nap – what’s been experienced during the day is carefully sorted through and then filed away in permanent storage for easy access later.

Building on that discovery, German researchers have shown in an intriguing experiment that the improvements in memory that we get during our slumbers be boosted even further if we’re exposed to a very specific kind of sound when we’re in deep sleep.

The researchers suspected that little clicking sounds played in synchrony with our brain’s natural oscillations during deep sleep might pump up the oscillations, thereby improving sleep – and also memory.

“Imagine the sleeping brain as a swing which oscillates slowly back and forth,” says study co-author Jan Born, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Tubingen. “The auditory stimulation acts as a gentle nudge of the swing at its highest point [to enhance] the down swinging direction.”

For the new study, Born and his colleagues asked 11 volunteers to memorize 120 word pairs. The words in each pair were related to one another to make them easier to remember, so, for example, “brain” might be paired with “consciousness” and “problem” with “solution.”

In the evening, the volunteers were tested. A researcher would say one of the words from the pair and the volunteer was to try to remember the other.

Then the volunteers were sent off to the sleep lab where their brain activity was monitored throughout the night.

In the first part of the experiment, clicking noises were played through headphones when volunteers reached deep – or slow wave – sleep. In the morning, they were again tested on how well they remembered the word pairs.

A week later the volunteers were again brought into the lab and the experiment was run exactly as it had been the first time, except that there were no clicking sounds during the night.

To see whether the sounds had improved memory, the researchers subtracted the scores from the evening tests (taken before sleep) from the scores from the morning tests.

In both parts of the experiment, morning scores were improved over evening ones. When there was no clicking during the night, people, on average, remembered 13 more word pairs in the morning than in the evening. But the biggest difference was when people were exposed to clicking during the night. They remembered 22 more word pairs in the morning than they had in tests the evening before. That’s almost double the improvements brought on by sleep alone.

So, will college students be rushing out to buy new-fangled headphones that click in the middle of the night?

Not just yet, Born says.

“The creation of head phones that automatically apply auditory stimuli following the stimulation protocol presented in our publication is possible, [but] not so easy,” he explains. “There is ongoing work on these applied frontiers and therefore the development of such devices in the long-term is not so far-fetched.”

One big hurdle to developing a memory enhancing device is that the clicking sound must be in rhythm with the brain’s oscillations. And that, currently, requires the sleeper to be hooked up to an EEG in a sleep lab so brain waves can be monitored.

In the meantime, specialists may want to use the new method to improve sleep quality in people who are restless during the night, Born says.

“The most obvious application for our finding is in clinical settings, in order to enhance the slow oscillation sleep rhythm and thus improve slow wave sleep in certain forms of insomnia,” he explains. 

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“My bed was my home,” says Anna Summer. “I would hit a point in the day where I thought, if I don’t go to sleep right now, I will literally not survive.”

Summer, a lawyer in Georgia, suffers from a mysterious disorder that caused her to sleep for up to 18 hours a day, reports TODAY’s Gabe Gutierrez.

"It was like an addiction," she told TODAY.

And yet she never felt rested. Summer took a leave of absence and began treatment at Emory University. After determining that she didn’t have a thyroid problem or depression, doctors discovered the problem that was ruining her life -– Summer had a major sleeping disorder that most often affects women. Emory researchers had found it in 31 other patients like Anna.

"We've discovered in a large number of these folks the body seems to be producing a substance that acts very much like a sedative, hypnotic drug,” neurologist Dr. David Rye told TODAY.

The condition makes patient response times as slow as people who are legally drunk. Researchers aren’t sure of the cause, but they estimate the disorder could affect 1 in 800 people.

The Emory researchers are testing a drug called flumazenil, normally used to help surgery patients wake up from anesthesia. Patient Vicki Rusk got the IV drug during Emory’s research.

“The fog was lifted,” Rusk told TODAY. “You felt like you were awake.”

So far, Summer is the only patient taking flumazenil in pill form, thanks to a donation from a pharmaceutical company.

“I was existing before treatment, but I wasn’t living,” she says.

Her supply of medicine runs out next year. She and her doctors are trying to convince the pharmaceutical industry to mass produce the drug, the only effective treatment of the disorder.

The research was just published in the medical journal Science Translational Medicine.

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You may have heard about the 31-year-old Idaho woman who last week woke up after “sleep swimming” in the Snake River. She was found, suffering from hypothermia, along the shore. It was the second time she’d done it this summer.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Sure, we’ve all heard of bizarre cases of “sleep driving” and “sleep eating” and even “sleep sex,” but sleep swimming? In a cold river? (I’ve been in the Snake River in Idaho, and I can tell you, it’s cold.) Surely, even if you could walk to the river in your sleep, that first splash of icy water would wake you.

Not necessarily. 

The problem with that popular notion, explained Dr. Mark Mahowald, visiting professor at Stanford University’s parasomnia clinic (parasomnia refers to sleep disorders involving behavior), is that “sleep” doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing affair.

Parts of your brain can be “asleep” while other parts are “awake.” Brain regions, mainly the frontal cortex, responsible for self-control, reasoning and laying down memories can be happily snoozing while parts of the deep brain, like the stem, can be “awake.”

Because deep brain regions have been equipped with what Mahowald calls “central pattern generators,” patterns of physical acts, something like one of those dance steps instructors lay down on a floor, “you can have somebody who is sleepwalking, and be capable of performing extremely complex behaviors.”

He likens it to a chicken that goes under the hatchet and then starts running around, headless, through the barnyard. The chicken doesn’t have any brain at all, and yet, because its spinal cord has complex pattern generators in it, the chicken runs.

“In humans,” he explained, “there is good evidence that complex behaviors like running, screaming, shouting, sex acts, are all pre-packaged central pattern generators,” either learned or instinctive, that are let loose while the rational brain is sleeping.

You’d have to know how to swim in order to swim in your sleep, of course -- you can’t just start playing Chopin in your sleep if you don’t already know how -- but this explains why people can drive, sometimes long distances, and not recall ever doing it.

People have actually committed murder while sleeping, as documented on a website run by Mahowald and colleagues.

The cold water of a river wouldn’t necessarily wake the sleeper because sleep is like being in a state of anesthesia. We tend not to feel pain or discomfort while sleeping, only after the event is over.

“We had a case in Minnesota where a guy sleep walked outside, at 20 below zero, and sustained incredible frostbite on his feet,” Mahowald recalled. “He wasn’t aware until he woke up and saw the blisters.” 

The causes of sleep walking vary, but may have a genetic component, explained Dr. Steven Poceta, a neurologist affiliated with the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in San Diego who has documented cases of sleep eating, driving, and cooking among other behaviors.

While science hasn’t figured out why many children sleep walk, but outgrow it, it does appear that the habit can return during times of stress. “That’s a very common scenario,” Poceta said.

Sleep deprivation caused by apnea, or restless leg syndrome, can lead to sleepwalking. So can drugs like zolpidem (Ambien), which became infamous for leading to sleep eating. As for how often that happens, Poceta said, “we think it is more common than is fully appreciated.”    

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com) to be published Sept. 13.

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Consider yourself lucky people if you’re one of those people who fall asleep easily, and stay asleep until the alarm goes off. Not so for David K. Randall, author of the new book "Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep."

Three years ago he woke up one night and instead of rolling over in his bed, he found himself in his hallway with a bruised knee and back.  It’s not like Randall’s loving wife kicked him out of the sack. Instead, he’s among the one in seven Americans with a long-term sleep disorder. Randall talks to NBCNews.com about the state of sleep research, why some of us just can’t seem to get enough  Zzzzzs, and also about those sometimes humorous, but more often dangerous, nighttime rambles.

Q: It stands to reason that finding yourself in your hallway instead of your bed was pretty much of a “eureka” moment in terms that something was wrong with you.

A: Absolutely. I went to my doctor and basically said that I didn’t want to run into another wall, so what can be done to help me. He said that they really didn’t know much about sleep, so just try and take it easy. This was the summer of 2009, and was the first sleepwalking episode that I had that I was actually aware of. I probably had more.

I know I used to laugh and sing and talk in my sleep all the time. But being mobile really freaked me out. I wanted to find out more about sleep, and after I started working on the book I found that sleepwalking could be due to stress, depression, accumulated lack of sleep, or even have a genetic component. I realized my dad told me that he was a sleepwalker. He grew up on a farm in Kansas and once found himself in a corn field, which sounds more like an alien abduction, but it was a sleepwalking episode. So it’s probably in my genes.

Q: Science recognizes some 75 sleep disorders, yet you say science really doesn’t know that much about sleep.

A: Well, actually, most studies are actually focused on sleep deprivation, rather than just sleep itself. We know that lack of sleep, for example, can cause a lot of issues from high blood pressure and diabetes to poor work or athletic performance, among other problems. But science still can’t answer the basic question on why we need to sleep. I was really surprised by that.

Q: So what do we know about sleep deprivation?

One study showed that rats will die from sleep deprivation after 11 days. That’s a terrible way to go. The most extensively documented study on a human was done in the 1960s when a subject went without sleep for 11 days. He developed paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, and problems with short-term memory.

Q: But most of us don’t go without sleep for 11 days. We turn to medications even if we have one lousy night of sleep. What’s your take on pharmaceuticals?

A: I think there’s a two-part issue. First, with over-the-counter aids, some people take them every night, when they are supposed to be used short-term. Then, while there may not be a physical dependency, there is a mental dependency.  Prescription drugs, like Ambien and Lunesta, really don’t have that great of an effect. Studies show they may make you go to sleep 10 minutes earlier and sleep 10 minutes longer. That’s it. Plus, potential drug side effects like sleep eating and sleep driving, for example, aren’t a lot of fun.

Q: Everyone blames a sleepless night on modern-day stressors like a bad economy, a bad job, a bad fill-in-the-blank. So did our ancestors sleep better?

A: Maybe. But it’s kind of hard to say how sleep was for people in 500 A.D. when they probably slept on straw or were afraid of being eaten by some animal. But what we do know in pre-industrial times, people would sleep for a few hours, wake for an hour around midnight, and then go back to sleep until daybreak. Studies show that if people are deprived of artificial lighting, they will naturally sleep in this pattern. There’s been some work that shows that our gadgets like TV’s, computers, cell phones, and computer tablets are helping to destroy our sleep patterns.

Q: What about dreams? Is that still looked at as voodoo science?

A: I had a dream researcher tell me that he still gets weird glances from colleagues who think the work is a little to “new agey.”  I never used to think dreams meant anything, now I’m not so sure.

Q: Why not?

A: There are some studies showing our dreams are pretty true to life, minus the logic of the dream world, which can be very strange.

Researchers know that we tend to dream of things that make us anxious, and most dreams are unpleasant. That could be due to the fact that nothing else is competing for our attention when we’re dreaming. And letting our minds experience some anxious moment while dreaming could possibly function as a dress rehearsal for life. Plus, there is some work showing that that dreams could possibly play a role in how we pick up a new skill or come up with a solution to a problem.

Q: How are you sleeping now?

A: I think sleepwalking will be with me my whole life. But then again, I also have a two-month old son. So I’m not sure I’m going to get a good night’s sleep until he’s about 18.

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In the classic movie White Christmas, Bing Crosby jokingly tells Rosemary Clooney that by eating the right sandwich before bed, he can make sure he dreams about redheads, or blondes. If only we could all influence the content of our dreams so easily.

Well, a dream researcher in Hong Kong named Calvin Kai-Ching Yu, of Shue Yan University, says we can, at least a little.

For a study released last week in the journal Dreaming, he sampled 670 people, mostly university students, two-thirds of whom were females. He had them complete surveys about the intensities of their dreams, how often their dreams contained specific themes (such as flying, being chased, suffocation, and so on), and personality traits. They also indicated how often they slept on their sides, face up (supine), or face down (prone) on a five point scale from “never” to “almost every time.”

When he analyzed the numbers, he found that the prone sleepers, as a group, were much more likely to score highly on what he calls the Dream Motif Scale (DMS), regardless of their personality type. Motifs like “persecution,” “erotomania,” and “sex” appeared significantly more frequently.

He concluded that “this study provides the evidence that dream experiences, and in particular dream content, can be influenced by body posture during sleep.”

In other words, sleeping face down is more likely to give you intense dreams featuring several common themes. Among the persecution motifs, for example, people reported “being tied up,” “being locked up,” and “unable to move.”

But why would position so influence the content of our dreams? Kai-Ching Yu believes that the prone position provides more intense physical stimulus, making it tougher to breathe, for example, and making our bodies feel more constricted.

“The unconscious brains of the dreamers try to make sense, and even make use of, the external stimuli,” he told NBCNews.com.

It’s something like the dreams we have – common across cultures – when we have to urinate. We’re sleeping, but the pressure begins influencing our dream content so we start dreaming about bathrooms, or having to go. Also, when we’re face down, our genitals are receiving more stimulus from the bed and sheets, he speculates, so our brains incorporate that into sex-related dreaming.

He may be right, but there are reasons to be skeptical. First, a common problem in dream research is that people often don’t accurately recall their dreams even when they’ve just awakened. Also, while many people may think they know what position they sleep in, they’re often wrong. The dream scales Kai-Ching Yu used in his study were invented by him and, he said, they have not been validated by other researchers, though he has used them in many studies and gotten consistent results.

But the biggest reason for skepticism is that other scientists argue we’re cut off from the external world when we’re asleep. We’re in a completely internal realm – at the mercy of what sleep researchers from Harvard have called “a virtual reality system” without meaningful responses to the outside world, like the touch of sheets or the pressure of our bodies laying face down.

He doesn’t completely disagree, but said “I believe that the brain during sleep is not at all totally detached from the external world, and somatosensory stimuli, including those stemming from the environment, are probably incorporated into dream content more often than people observe or are aware of.” This is especially true, he thinks, at the unconscious level. That’s where our brains try to make sense, even if distorted, of what the body’s feeling.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com) to be published Sept. 13.

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Everyone dreams. But less than 1 percent of adults have a rare condition that causes them to act out their dreams while asleep.

During a vivid dream involving lots of action, people with REM sleep behavior disorder, (RBD) may punch, kick, scream, shout, swear or grab someone while sleeping or they may jump out of bed -- injuring themselves or hurting a bedmate in the process. 

RBD episodes happen during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, a stage of shut-eye when dreaming occurs, or roughly every two hours.

Usually the body is "paralyzed" during REM sleep. But this doesn't happen in people with RBD, so their arms and legs are free to move while dreaming. As a result, if someone with RBD is dreaming of being attacked, they may fight back in their sleep. There's medication to treat RBD symptoms, yet doctors have previously known little about who is affected by the disorder other than it is more common in men and typically strikes people after age 50.

For reasons that are still unclear, REM sleep behavior disorder also seems to increase a person's risk for Parkinson's disease and one type of dementia. Some studies have suggested that more than 50 percent of those with this rare sleep disorder may go on to develop a neurodegenerative disease.

To learn more, a recent study published in the journal Neurology tried to determine the risk factors for RBD and whether they were similar to those for Parkinson's disease or dementia.

They compared the lifestyle habits of 347 people with RBD to the same number of people who didn't have this sleep problem but were similar in age and gender. 

The study identified several potential risk factors for RBD, including having a previous head injury, being a farmer, and working in a job with pesticide exposure. All three of these risks have also been linked with Parkinson's disease.

Researchers also found that people who had fewer years of education increase their chances of RBD.

"Many of the risk factors for RBD are the same as for Parkinson's disease, however, it is ultimately where they differ that can teach us the most," says study author Dr. Ronald Postuma, a neurologist and associate professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

One important difference scientists found was that people who smoke were more likely to develop RBD, but nicotine has been shown to reduce the odds of Parkinson's disease. A second difference is that coffee drinking was not linked with the sleep disorder while other studies have suggested it helps protect against Parkinson's disease.

Postuma suspects that in some people, REM sleep behavior disorder can be an important sign of early Parkinson's disease. In these early stages, he says the disease may affect areas of the brain involved in sleep, smell, and bladder control.

As Parkinson's advances, it affects the motor areas of the brain, producing symptoms such as tremors, rigid muscles, and problems with walking or posture.

Someone who is acting out their dreams at night often first learns they're doing this from their sleep partner. Sleep talking or sleep walking is usually something quite different from RBD, points out Postuma.

A specialist at a sleep clinic can confirm the diagnosis. Postuma also recommends that RBD patients should be followed by a neurologist, who can monitor and treat their symptoms should any Parkinson changes emerge. 

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Will smoke, even the first, faint scent of a fire, wake a person from a deep slumber?

At least according to published research, the answer to that burning question is quite hazy: Maybe.

Maybe smoke will wake you up but maybe not, according to two studies conducted during the past 15 years. 

“There is scant research that addresses awakening from the smell of smoke,” said Dr. Thomas Freedom, program director of the NorthShore University HealthSystem Sleep Program near Chicago. (He was not affiliated with either study.) “Some of the findings are contradictory.”

This much sleep doctors know: sensory stimuli -- sound, temperature, touch, even pain -- become less effective in rousing people the deeper they drop into nightly sleep stages.

For example, Freedom said, it’s easier to rally a sleeper who is in “stage N1” – a lighter phase of slumber – versus a person in “N3” or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is a more submerged state of siesta.

Things that go bump in the night or shoves from a frustrated bedmate (“Yo! Stop snoring!”) may activate “peripheral receptors” – tiny sensors, many of which are located in your skin. Louder sounds or stronger vibrations are, of course, more apt to fully wake someone, Freedom said.

“But the sense of smell may differ in that increasing intensity does not appear to lead to awakening in deeper stages of sleep,” Freedom said.

In 1997, a study performed by the Irondale Fire and Rescue Service in Irondale, Ala., found that among 10 adults who were snoozing in a medical sleep lab, two of the subjects awoke when a smoke odor was introduced into their room. 

In 2004, at Brown University, researchers found that among the six people they tested – three healthy men and three healthy women, aged 20 to 25 years old – all could be jostled awake disrupted by noise but none were stirred by odors. In the lab, the sleepers were exposed to both peppermint and pyridine, a compound that carries an strong, fish-like scent, reacting to neither. 

"As the saying goes," wrote the paper's co-author, psychiatry professor Mary A. Carskadon, "we 'wake up and smell the coffee,' not the other way around."

But Las Vegas resident Sharon Chayra believes the certain people – like her – with a fine-tuned olfactory sense are more prone to be yanked awake by a foreign smell. She’s been roused, she said, by the scents of her husband baking cookies late at night, by her dog pooping, and by fireplace embers that hadn’t been properly extinguished.

“We’d had a fire in the wood-burning fireplace downstairs. It was about 1 a.m. and I could just smell burning fire. I popped up just like a piece of toast,” said Chayra, 49. “There wasn’t smoke necessarily but enough of an odor for me to wake up and go check out what was going on.”

Once she reached main floor of her home, she doused the remaining red embers with water and sand.

Then again, Chayra says her children do tease her because she is constantly sniffing the air.

"'You act like a dog!’ That’s what they tell me. I guess I do. If I smell something, I will wake up and go track it down like a bloodhound.” 

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Chronic sleep deprivation – or a severe, short-term lack of Z’s from, say, cramming for exams over two straight nights – can make you silly or sad, slow to react, memory-impaired and more apt to take risks.

But what it rarely does, according to a leading sleep expert, is make you go temporarily insane, as a JetBlue Airways pilot apparently did on a March 27 flight from New York to Las Vegas. After Clayton Osbon had a cockpit meltdown, ranting about religion and terrorists, passengers eventually wrestled him to the cabin floor and a co-pilot safely landed the plane. Osbon was charged with interfering with flight crew instructions.   

During the pilot's trial, a psychologist testified that Osbon suffered "a brief psychotic disorder" due to lack of sleep, according to a court transcript obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. A federal judge in Texas agreed with that notion and on July 3 ruled Osbon not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

“But if somebody is going to have a psychotic episode due to sleep deprivation, it’s usually not the first time it’s going to happen, and usually there is a history of depression or other psychiatric illness," said Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based clinical psychologist and a member of the American Board of Sleep Medicine.

Breus has not reviewed Osbon’s case and can only speak, he said, from his experiences with other patients and from existing literature.

“I don’t know about this pilot’s mental health background. But think back to when you were in college. Did you ever pull an all-nighter? I sure did. Last time I checked, people who pull all-nighters don’t go screaming through the hallways screaming bloody murder at the top of their lungs,” Breus said.

At Osbon’s trial, forensic neuropsychologist Robert E.H. Johnson testified that Osbon's disorder lasted roughly one week after his mental break aboard the flight. On the stand, Johnson did not make clear how long Osbon went without sleep. The pilot’s psychiatric evaluation was sealed during the trial, according to the AP. A JetBlue spokeswoman told the AP that Osbon did not fly March 24 or March 25, and worked a round-trip flight March 26, meaning he had 17 hours of down time before his March 27 departure to Las Vegas.

“The deprivation that would probably be required for somebody to have a psychotic episode - if they’ve never had one before - he’s going to had to have been up for a couple of days,” Breus said.

More commonly, especially among emergency room doctors and the parents of newborns, acute sleep deprivation (one or two nights without any sleep) or partial, chronic sleep deprivation (maybe four hours per night over several weeks) can trigger an array of less-frightening symptoms, Breus said.

Depending on how much sleep they are lacking and how long they’ve gone without closing their eyes, people can hallucinate and find things funny that aren’t the least bit comical – also known as being giddy, Breus said.

“Also, your reaction time slows down: you may drive like you might be drunk,” Breus said. “You’re not making decisions the way you should. Data also shows that people take higher risks when sleep deprived.”

He cited cases of gamblers, wagering without much sleep, who disregard high odds and plunk down tall stacks of chips anyway. 

“They knew the risks or odds at the table but they didn’t care,” Breus said.

Inappropriate emotional swings also can take root, meaning people laugh more hysterically than they should when watching marginally funny events, or they become more depressed than is necessary when they witness something just a bit sad.

Oddly, in people diagnosed with depression, their mood can actually lighten when they go 24 hours without sleep – and their depression returns after rest, Breus said.

“What happens with sleep deprivation is usually not permanent. It’s usually temporary,” Breus said. “So you’re sleep deprived, you have some weird behaviors, you react slowly, your mood changes. But once you get some sleep, that stuff goes all away. How long has that pilot been in the hospital now?”

Osbon remains at a mental health facility in Fort Worth, the AP reported. He is scheduled for a hearing early next month during which his possible release from that hospital will be examined. 

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Could fear of the dark be ruining your sleep?

Scientists now say that many sleep problems can be traced to an anxiety that sparks as soon as the lights go down, according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

The small study found that 50 percent of adults who reported sleep problems also admitted to being scared of the dark - and were also measurably more anxious when the lights were turned off.

“The good news, is that if this is what is going on, it’s very treatable,” said the study’s lead author Colleen Carney, an associate professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. “And it doesn’t take long to treat.”

To see if bad sleep might be phobia driven, Carney and her colleagues rounded up 93 college students and asked them to fill out surveys that included questions about their sleep quality and whether they were afraid of the dark.

Then the researchers ran an intriguing experiment: In the first half of the experiment the volunteers sat in a room with the lights on. In the second half, they sat with the lights off. All the while, the volunteers were wearing headsets that would periodically play a blast of noise.

“Then we watched their reactions in the light and the dark,” Carney said. “In the light they were no different. But in the dark, the poor sleepers were more likely to be startled.”

In other words, compared to the sound sleepers, the insomniacs were more likely to blink and to flinch when they heard the noise in the dark. In fact, the more times they heard the noise, the more anxious and jumpy they got. The good sleepers, in contrast, got used to hearing the noise and eventually stopped reacting to it.

Fear of the dark isn’t something that sleep doctors currently look for, Carney said. So the new research might open new avenues for treatment.

And the good news is that phobias often respond very quickly to treatment with exposure therapy, Carney added. So, just as a therapist can get you used to spiders and snakes by slowly exposing you to them, they’ll also be able get you over your fear of the dark.           

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