It is possible to learn while sleeping

If you think sleep is a waste of time, a new study by researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel points out that you can use your unconscious time to learn new things.

According to the Nature website, scientists used a fairly simple learning method called classical conditioning - or Pavlov conditioning - to teach 55 individuals to associate two stimuli (aromas and sounds) while sleeping.

Response-stimulus

The researchers chose to work with sounds and smells - pleasant and unpleasant - because we don't need to be awake to process them by measuring participants' conditioning through breathing. When a person smells pleasant, the inspiration is deeper, and the opposite is true when it comes to an unpleasant odor.

After a while, however, the study participants no longer had to smell anything to show changes in their breathing, just the sound stimulus to breathe more or less deeply. Although the experiment involves relatively simple actions, scientists believe that we would also be able to learn more complex information during sleep.

Thus, according to the researchers, our brain is able to recognize and process external stimuli even while we are sleeping, although there are some limitations to this process. However, the authors of the study already warn: it is no use to put the math book under the pillow and think that you will wake up knowing how to decipher the most varied equations, unfortunately!

Source: Nature