![]() “Implicit memory is hard to explicitly state. We had to access their unconscious, implicit knowledge through questions about semantic aspects of these new words,” Züst said. Study participants were then asked to imagine the object the pseudoword denoted, and to guess whether it was smaller or larger than a shoebox - an approach that allowed researchers to tap into their unconscious memory. Because participants didn’t know a recording was playing while they slept, they were unaware that their brains had heard some of the words before. ![]() ![]() When they woke up, participants were presented with the fake words again, but this time without their translations. The goal was to see if the words would leave some sort of trace in the patient’s memory, even if it was at an unconscious level. German-speaking study participants slept to the sound of an audio recording that presented pairs of pseudowords representing a non-existent foreign language and their translations. In the study, researchers examined whether people can form meaningful associations between foreign words and their translations while in slow-wave sleep, a stage when a person has little consciousness of their environment. Even more, the sleeping brain is able to make new associations,” said Marc Züst, co-first-author of the paper. “What we found in our study is that the sleeping brain can actually encode new information and store it for long term. But a new study from the Decoding Sleep Interfaculty Research Cooperation at the University of Bern, Switzerland, has shown that the brain’s channels for learning are also open during sleep. They thought our brains were too focused on the nightly housekeeping. ![]() Yet scientists didn’t think it was possible to actually learn new things while we sleep. Important stuff gets filed away, while unimportant stuff gets deleted to make room for new learning. While we catch Z’s, our brains are busy organizing and consolidating the information and events we encountered that day. Researchers have long known that sleeping plays an important role in the learning process. But it may enhance your ability to learn new vocabulary, according to a study published in Current Biology. ![]() infomercial, but new research has found some evidence for sleep learning. Of course, listening to French on tape while you sleep is unlikely to instantly give you the ability to order a vanilla latte and an omelet in a foreign tongue the next morning. “Learn a new language while you sleep!” may sound like the start of a bad 3 a.m. ![]()
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