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Learning can happen while you're sleeping, according to a study performed by the Weizmann Institute.
Prior attempts at research on this subject had been complicated by the fact that while sleep has been shown to be important for memory consolidation and for learning, it remained to be seen as to just how this sleep-enhanced learning takes place.
Prof. Noam Sobel and research student Anat Arzi, along with Sobel's group in the Institute's Neurobiology Department, collaborated with researchers from Loewenstein Hospital and the Academic College of Tel Aviv -- Jaffa. An Aug. 26, 2012 article on Sciencedaily.com reported on the Weizmann study.
Participants' sleep was under constant supervision in a special lab. A tone was played, an odor was released. Another tone was sounded, then another odor was released.
If the first odor was pleasant, the second was unpleasant, or vice versa. As one might expect, the participants inhaled more deeply of the pleasant odors, and breathed in a more shallow manner for the less pleasant smells.
Sometimes the participants just heard tones, without odors. The participants had reactions to the tones in their sleep that were the same as their reactions to the tones and odors.
The different reactions were accompanied by different modes of breathing, deep for pleasant smells, shallow for unpleasant odors. Deep breathing also occurred when the tones that had become associated with pleasant smells were heard without any odor.
After the participants were awake the next day, tones were heard, without any odors. None of the participants had any recollection of the experience through the night, yet their breathing corresponded with the learned behavior of the night before.
Conditioning of this type involves areas of the brain like the hippocampus which plays a role in formation of memory.
Does the phase of sleep play a role as well? The researchers wanted to find out.
In another experiment by these same researchers, reported in an Aug. 26, 2013 article on Sciencedaily.com, it was found that learning was more thorough during REM sleep. However, the association being passed on to the waking state was linked only with non-REM sleep.
Researchers hypothesized that something they called "dream amnesia" might be in play. When you're in REM sleep, you may be easily affected by stimuli but may not remember it, just as dreams are often not remembered.
Read more on this research in the Aug. 26, 2012 edition of Nature Neuroscience.
An earlier study on sleep and learning performed by Dr. Ines Wilhelm of the University of Tübingen's Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology had also been published in Nature Neuroscience.
Their research indicated that children are even more affected than adults in terms of memory consolidation during sleep.
Memories of children from ages 8-11 and memories of young adults were tested, after a night's sleep as well as at the end of a day while still awake.
Both age groups remembered more after they had a night's sleep following a session of learning, than those who stayed awake afterward. The group of children did a more thorough job of remembering than the young adults did.
The subject of sleep continues to open up more of the world of the brain, and how it learns. And you thought when you were asleep you weren't doing anything.
Sources:
Sleep Learning Is Possible: Associations Formed When Asleep Remained Intact When Awake
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120826143531.htm
Universitaet Tübingen (2013, February 26). Sleep reinforces learning: Children’s brains transform subconsciously learned material into active knowledge. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 4, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130226081155.htm
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Reviewed March 5, 2013
by Michele Blacksberg RN
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