Swiss scientists have succeeded in making participants learn unknown words and their translation while they sleep.
Take advantage of the arms of Morpheus to learn new words: according to research conducted at the University of Bern in Switzerland, this would be possible. The results, published in Current Biologyshow that during the deep slow wave sleep phase, participants were able to learn new knowledge and restore it when they woke up.
#Learning in your sleep? Researchers of the #unibern showed that we can acquire #vocabulary of a new #language during distinct phases of slow-wave #sleep and that the sleep-learned vocabulary could be retrieved unconsciously after waking up: https://t.co/Dl0WTUySrZ pic.twitter.com/ugX6UESd0O
— University of Bern (@unibern) January 31, 2019
Imaginary words coupled with known words
For several years, the scientific community has recognized the role of sleep in consolidating information learned during phases of wakefulness. The Swiss researchers wondered if it was possible that sleep makes it possible to record information and anchor it in memory.
Their research was carried out thanks to 41 volunteers, who underwent encephalograms while they slept. The researchers gave the participants headphones during their nap so that they heard different pairs of words built on the same shape: a word in German and its translation into an imaginary language. That wasn’t the only subtlety: half the words described an object smaller than a shoebox.
The Importance of Slow Brain Waves
When they woke up, the participants had to carry out a test: the scientists presented them with the imaginary words and they had to indicate whether they designated objects capable of entering a shoebox or not. The number of correct answers suggests that they are not just a coincidence. Scientists found that when words were presented during slow brain wave peaks, memory was stronger.
These moments correspond to a strong activity of neurons during sleep. MRI scans confirmed increased activity in the language and hippocampus areas of the brain when the word pairs were presented. The study also reveals that repeating word pairs increased their chance of memorization. Other tests must be conducted to deepen these results but it may be possible, in a few years, to learn a new language effortlessly, while sleeping!