Learn while we sleep: science can be close to this delight

One of the most hilarious episodes of “Friends” is when Chandler decides to listen to a sleep hypnosis tape to try to quit his cigarette addiction. While sleep is critical to fixing what we learn during the day, treatments like this have never been very effective. At least not until now ...

The idea of ​​gaining some specific knowledge while sleeping is not from today: in the 1920s, for example, a gadget called PsychoPhone promised to make people lose weight and even teach conquest techniques to bring their loved one back! And who wouldn't want to learn a new language or lose weight effortlessly?

A new study, published earlier this month in the journal Nature Communications, attempts to unravel this move from easy learning - many people discredit it as possible. The research was led by French neuroscientist Thomas Andrillon and was attended by 20 volunteers who never had sleep disorders. Andrillon's team found that we are indeed capable of formulating memories while we sleep!

To reach this conclusion, scientists played sequences of white noise, that is, random signals with different frequencies that create a constant power. This activates our hearing to its maximum potential, being able to stimulate the cerebral cortex while we sleep!

When individuals woke up, this same sequence was played so that they would think of it as they listened and try to reproduce what would come soon after. Interestingly, most really just learned to hear the noises during sleep!

Of course night hypnosis tapes don't work like white noise, so they don't have proven effectiveness. But knowing that it is possible to create memories even while sleeping can be a first step in the future to create learning techniques that really benefit from it.