THERE IS A NEW STUDY THAT OFFERS INSIGHT INTO HOW WE CAN LEARN WHILE WE ARE SLEEPING!
Researchers in Paris have discovered that new auditory memories can be formed while we sleep, as long as they are delivered during the right sleep phase. The idea we can form new memories while we are sleeping has been a topic of great debate among scientists in recent years and this new study demonstrates that the brain can indeed learn new information in a sleeping state.
The realm of "sleep learning" has sat precariously on the fringe of pseudoscience for decades. To train your brain while you sleep is a popular self-help technique, but science has struggled to clearly show whether or not we do actually have a capacity to take in new information while we sleep.
The connection between sleep and memory has been a subject that has been researched and the process of sleeping has been shown to play an important part in how we retain new information.
This process is generally referred to as memory consolidation, where we essentially sort all the information gathered during our waking day and file it into higher cortical centres.The question remains, what information is consolidated during different sleep phases, but the general view is that emotional memories are consolidated during sleep, while declarative memories such as facts and figures are consolidated during a slow wave or deep sleep.
With this study, researchers exposed sleeping subjects to white noise that incorporated repetitive patterns of tones. The outcome of this was to study how their brains respond to the sounds at different stages of sleep under electroencephalographic analysis, and also to see if the subjects had greater recognition of these sounds upon waking, which would indicate their brains had learned the sound patterns while sleeping.
Interestingly enough the results and through the behavioural response after waking, all the patients seemed to display evidence of learning the sound pattern.
This fascinating result further adds weight to reconciling the two seemingly contradictory theories on sleep's function in memory. The inability for subjects to imprint new memories during N3 –deep sleep phase – indicates this is most likely when the brain is effectively discarding unnecessary information. Whereas the more active N2 phases – occurs right before entering the deep sleep phase – indicate times when the sleeping brain can still accept information. Hence, sleep can act as both memory consolidation and "memory dump" depending on the phase.
Ultimately, this new study makes it clear that our brains are certainly able to remember auditory signals heard while asleep as long as the sounds are delivered during the correct phase. Further investigation needs to be done to see if this phenomenon translates into more complex auditory learning, such as words, but the big takeaway here is that you better time those sleep learning tapes to the right sleep phase otherwise you may be sending all that knowledge straight to the brain dump.