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Can A Person Learn While Sleeping

1) A growing number of neuroscientists believe that sleep is not just for cementing memories, but is also a time for learning new information through a process called hypnopedia or sleep-learning. 2) Studies have shown that certain stages of non-REM sleep activate the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning, and neural oscillations called sleep spindles may play a role in transferring new information to be stored in the brain. 3) One recent study found that participants who listened to new vocabulary words while sleeping retained more words than those who stayed awake, indicating sleep may help with learning new information like vocabulary.

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53 views3 pages

Can A Person Learn While Sleeping

1) A growing number of neuroscientists believe that sleep is not just for cementing memories, but is also a time for learning new information through a process called hypnopedia or sleep-learning. 2) Studies have shown that certain stages of non-REM sleep activate the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning, and neural oscillations called sleep spindles may play a role in transferring new information to be stored in the brain. 3) One recent study found that participants who listened to new vocabulary words while sleeping retained more words than those who stayed awake, indicating sleep may help with learning new information like vocabulary.

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Boudaoud Family
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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 BURNING QUESTION

Can a Person Learn While Sleeping?


A growing number of neuroscientists believe that sleep not only helps cement
memories, but is actually a time to learn something new
Some studies show it is possible to learn new information during sleep, such as new vocabulary in a foreign
language. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

By Heidi Mitchell
March 16, 2019 10:00 am ET

For most people, the 16 hours spent awake each day are hardly enough time to get critical
tasks done, let alone acquire knowledge. Yet a growing number of neuroscientists believe
that sleep not only helps cement memories, but is actually a time to learn something new
—even a foreign language.
Sanam Hafeez, a clinical neuropsychologist and professor at Columbia University,
explains how this might be possible.

Learn This Word: Hypnopedia


Through decades of research, Dr. Hafeez says, scientists have concluded that while we’re
bombarded by stimuli all day, sleep is the time when the brain filters all that information.
“I think of it as a computer shuffling process: junk, junk, junk, important, junk,” she says.
“As it tunes out all these distractions, the brain encodes information and decides how
important a memory or a piece of information is.”

A study published in 1965 using electroencephalograms (EEGs) showed that hypnopedia,


or sleep-learning, was a real thing. In that and later studies, researchers showed that
during certain cycles of sleep that don’t include dreaming, the hippocampus—the primary
area of the brain related to memory and learning, as well as in the retrieval of new
learning—is activated.
This happens, Dr. Hafeez says, through “neural oscillatory activity,” or the up-and-down
of wakefulness that occurs during Stage 2 non-REM sleep, when the heart rate slows and
body temperature drops. The “up-down” moments of neural activity, called sleep
spindles, last half a second to two seconds and have been shown to play an essential role
in sensory processing and long-term consolidation of memory.
“The up spindles of wakefulness help the brain communicate across different areas,
transferring data to the correct part of the brain,” she says. Another way to look at it, she
says, is the “up” phase is akin to the brain coming up for air for a split second and filing
information in the appropriate place for later recall.

‘Guga’ Means ‘Elephant’


In a recent study by researchers at the University of Zurich published in the scientific
journal Cerebral Cortex, 68 German students were asked to learn some new Dutch words
before 11 p.m. Half the students were allowed to go to sleep while the words were played
back to them. The other half stayed awake while listening to the words.
After three hours of sleep or wakefulness, the 68 students were tested on their memory of
the new vocabulary at 2 a.m. Researchers found that those who had listened to the words
while sleeping retained much more than those who didn’t sleep.

To ensure that the inferior performance of those who stayed awake wasn’t due to sleep
deprivation, researchers used EEGs. “The results were clinically significant,” Dr. Hafeez
says.

For further evidence that the “up” phase of spindles are the secret to sleep learning, Dr.
Hafeez points to another study published in the journal Current Biology by researchers at
the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Sleeping participants were exposed to made-up words and their translation while asleep.
When the translation was replayed two to four times during the “up” state of a sleep
spindle, recall was high, she says. “If they were told that ‘guga’ means ‘elephant’ while
sleeping, they were able to remember that ‘guga’ was related to something big when they
were awake.”

At least two other studies conditioned subjects to associate smells or sounds with new


information while they were asleep. These participants retrieved that new learning when
awake, without knowing that they had been exposed to new knowledge as they slept, Dr.
Hafeez says.
She notes that people with schizophrenia have few sleep spindles, and women tend to
have many more spindles than men, leading many neuropsychologists to infer that brain
estrogen production may be important for the consolidation of memory.

Priming Your Spindles


A small industry of YouTube videos has cropped up, aiming to teach new languages that
people can listen to while sleeping. Dr. Hafeez isn’t advocating for these sleep-learning
language videos, but does believe that good sleep hygiene can help facilitate a higher
number of spindles per night. That helps with learning and memory consolidation, both
during sleep and while awake.

She recommends cutting back on caffeine by 4 p.m., exercising well before bedtime and
using the bed exclusively for sleep. Then, she says, when you listen to that history
podcast as you nod off at night, you just might remember a few more details about Henry
VIII.

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