Hello Steemians,
I'm a big fan of Trevor Noah who is possibly South Africa's best export in terms of comedy and entertainment. Following one of his stand up show, he talked about his mixed heritage specifically in trying to impress his Swiss father by trying to talk to him in the German language. One interesting thing from his recount however was the method in which he used to learn the language - learning in his sleep.
When I first heard of it, I was absolutely excited - I mean, why actively acquire information when you can let the knowledge passively diffuse into your head? Needless to say, I was all pumped up to learn this technique and revolutionise the way I learn and revise. As far as excitement goes, a person of science like me also view things involving bold claims with a dose of healthy skepticism.
So I did my research and dug deep into the this technique of learning in your sleep and here's what I found out:
You can't learn new information while you sleep.
What a massive Lifehack that would be man - human beings could achieve incredible heights and new frontiers if we could start learning that way.
As far as what one may consider as the learn-in-your-sleep technique goes, rather than learning new things, the best possible thing you can get out of this is the consolidation of previously learned subjects. Now, some of you may already now that usual sleep at night is already a form of memory consolidation and clean-up by the brain which prompts the question, "How is this any different?"
A boost - That's right, sleeping is already an involuntary way of reinforcing your memory and experience but an active attempt to really cement those pages of facts for tomorrow's exam can be achieved with a little tweak/hack.
In the simplest way I could put this, the hack used to enhance the brain's ability to consolidate memory is to use external stimulus involving senses other than sight which includes sound and scent cues. Let's discuss that one by one.
SCENT
In 2007, a published study saw Neuroscientists using the scent of roses to see whether it would help subjects learn better. To do this, subjects were introduced to a specific smell of rose while being taught of locations of multiple different objects and then reintroduced that same smell in their slumber. As you may have guessed by now, the study found that compared to the control group, those who were exposed to the smell of the rose had significantly better recall. This boost of recall confirmed one of the proposed theory on how the consolidation process work, that is through neuron connections and association with other senses. Basically, the smell act as cues for the brain to reactivate those memories.
This study spearheaded more work in this field and it wasn't long before people started using different variables which leads us to...
SOUND
In a study published in the journal of Neuroscience in 2013, 60 people were asked to place 72 images on a computer screen with each placement followed by a corresponding sound. To make the matter more interesting, they were told to remember the items as they will be score for each correct recall with half of the items having high value point and the other half having low value point. So after a 90 minutes nap, their recall was put to the test and those who had the sounds from the placement on the computer screen played during their sleep was found to remember more of both the high value and low value items as those in the control group used the strategy of merely memorising the items with high value.
And now we get to the part where presumably, Trevor Noah was talking about - Learning language in your sleep.
In a 2014 study, 68 subjects were taught 120 new words in a different language and had those words played back in their sleep. What they found was that compared to the control group the average recall was 10% better but there's a crucial point here to make - the sounds played during the subjects' sleep were only the words they were exposed to as later on, study found out that when the sound of those words and their corresponding translation was played, it canceled out any form of memory boost.
This was very profound because it confirmed that rather than remembering things as they are, our brain actually associate memory with cues from our senses rather than the actual meaning of what we registered. It's not the translation of the words that we remember, it's the cues we associate with those words that help activate our recall.
That's all for this entry, hope you learned something new and if you did, definitely smash the upvote button and follow me for more awesome content. References are down below for you curious people. Thank you for reading ;)
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