Can you learn in your sleep?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 22 тра 2024
- Amazing things happen to your brain when you sleep - no special products needed. Just sit back, relax, and learn how sleep helps you learn.
00:00 Introduction
00:27 Sleep and learning contexts
2:27 Sleep and long-term learning
3:03 Sleep and procedural learning
3:23 Sleep hacking is possible
4:10 Getting more sleep is really good
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Footage sources:
Thanks to the Sleep Disorders Center in Florida for providing the psychomotor vigilance test. Check it out here: sleepdisordersflorida.com/pvt1...
The "sleep stages" animation is based on an image found here: Diekelmann, S., & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 114-126.
References
As you might expect, I have simplified and ignored a fair amount of the research on sleeping and learning (there's a lot of it!). For a great overview of some of the complexities, see:
Diekelmann, S., Wilhelm, I., & Born, J. (2009). The whats and whens of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Sleep medicine reviews, 13(5), 309-321. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Among the complexities: declarative and non-declarative memories rely on somewhat different systems that can interact while we sleep. REM sleep also contributes to memory consolidation and learning, but seems to be more strongly associated with procedural memory and "initial" memory consolidation.
The study finding an association between slow-wave sleep and long-term learning is here:
Alger, S. E., Lau, H., & Fishbein, W. (2012). Slow wave sleep during a daytime nap is necessary for protection from subsequent interference and long-term retention. Neurobiology of learning and memory, 98(2), 188-196. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
The "sleep extracting the gist" study with the word triplets is here:
Diekelmann, S., Born, J., & Wagner, U. (2010). Sleep enhances false memories depending on general memory performance. Behavioural brain research, 208(2), 425-429. www.sciencedirect.com/science... The "gist" effect only occurred for people who didn't remember the words that well in the first place.
The study on video game problem solving is here:
Beijamini, F., Pereira, S. I. R., Cini, F. A., & Louzada, F. M. (2014). After being challenged by a video game problem, sleep increases the chance to solve it. PloS one, 9(1), e84342. journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
On finger tapping, this contains a good discussion in the intro on the basic findings:
Tamaki, M., Huang, T. R., Yotsumoto, Y., Hämäläinen, M., Lin, F. H., Náñez, J. E., ... & Sasaki, Y. (2013). Enhanced spontaneous oscillations in the supplementary motor area are associated with sleep-dependent offline learning of finger-tapping motor-sequence task. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(34), 13894-13902. www.jneurosci.org/content/jne...
The "sleep hacking with smells" idea comes from this study:
Rasch, B., Büchel, C., Gais, S., & Born, J. (2007). Odor cues during slow-wave sleep prompt declarative memory consolidation. Science, 315(5817), 1426-1429. mechanism.ucsd.edu/~bill/teach...
And lots of other studies support the basic idea. With tones:
Creery, J. D., Oudiette, D., Antony, J. W., & Paller, K. A. (2015). Targeted memory reactivation during sleep depends on prior learning. Sleep, 38(5), 755-763. academic.oup.com/sleep/articl...
Oudiette, D., Antony, J. W., Creery, J. D., & Paller, K. A. (2013). The role of memory reactivation during wakefulness and sleep in determining which memories endure. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(15), 6672-6678. www.jneurosci.org/content/jne...
And with words:
Schreiner, T., & Rasch, B. (2015). Boosting vocabulary learning by verbal cueing during sleep. Cerebral Cortex, 25(11), 4169-4179. academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...
The basketball study is here:
Mah, C. D., Mah, K. E., Kezirian, E. J., & Dement, W. C. (2011). The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep, 34(7), 943-950. academic.oup.com/sleep/articl...
Smells.. Interesting. A clinical psychologist friend of mine said they use smells to tricker memories and act as a stimulus to aid recovery of many types of trauma. Also, I watched an interview with a British actress, she was playing a few different parts in various TV dramas and movies at the same time... She used a collection of smells to kick her into a particular character at any given time.
Love this channel! Keep up the good work!
Another awesome video 👏👏👏🤗. My first thought on the importance of sleep was, “but how do you get yourself to sleep longer?”
I do aaaalllll the sleep hygiene stuff I can, but for me the two things that moved the needle are
1. careful control of lighting (trying to match the brightness/color temp of the natural light… e.g. only low and warm light as the sun goes down; bright and cool light in the morning, etc.)
2. The obvious one, but it still surprises me: exercise.
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I’ve been wearing a Whoop strap 24/7 for 3+ years, so I can rely on data rather than what I *think* about how I’m sleeping.
It’s been a slow process to improve my sleep, but so worth it. I work mostly with *physical* rehab and performance, and just as strong (and now thanks to you another new favorite word: “abstractified” 😁) memory consolidation requires good sleep, so does the *exercise physiology* equivalent: tissue adaptation/remodeling.
Basically, without sleep the things we work on don’t *change* us 🤷🏼♀️.
I wish I’d known that 20 years’ ago…
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These days my clients are *horses*, and though their sleep patterns are different from humans (multiple shorter sleep sessions spread over 24 hours, with non-REM sleep standing up and REM sleep only possible lying down), paying attention to their sleep quality can make a huge difference.
(Turns out the biggest factor by far for them is that there is at least one other horse nearby that can act as a “guard” while others sleep. Perceived need to stay on guard keeps a prey animal from good and especially REM sleep…)
Sorry for these long horse-related comments I’m sure you have no interest in 😅. I’m just inspired by your videos, thank-you 💁♀️🙏
I've come across some articles that I haven't really read about sleep and exercise - and how they can be mutually reinforcing and beneficial. I try to control light, too. But we've got a young kid who still gets us up in the middle of the night, sometimes, and far too early in the morning. 😭
The stuff on horse sleep is actually fascinating. There's gotta be someone doing research on comparative animal sleep patterns. I bet that can tell us a lot about how animals evolved.
Simply astonishing 🤘🤘🤘
BABA IS YOU MENTIONED‼️
Your Chanel is absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for your work. Thanks to you I discovered free recall and elaboration among other notions. My grades improved significantly and I enjoy studying.
Greetings from France.
Awesome - great to hear!
On the smells, I would assume it's better to limit exposure to the time when I am learning something important instead of having it on constantly?
I wonder if there is any truth to those "bedtime calculators" that say you should avoid waking up during deep sleep. For example, one says I should go to bed around 8:45, 10:15 or 11:45 if my goal is to wake up at 6am.
I am starting to explore it since I wake up really tired at times, and I couldn't find a pattern.
Can you tell more about solving problems while you are sleeping? Is it good or bad? Sometimes i feel extremely exhausted after those dreams with problem solving but also i can get solutions
haha, just commented another vid of yours talking about scent🙂
You mentioned napping for 15 minutes being less effective in the long-term compared to 1-hour napping for memory recall, but what are your thoughts on the effectiveness of things like 20-minute non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) cycles compared to napping generally speaking, or activity-shifting between bouts of learning (e.g., doing guided meditations between)? -- Would these be too disruptive to memory consolidation, insufficient for high-quality consolidation, etc.?
I don't want to ask too many questions, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts Andrew Huberman's suggestions for learning (e.g., doing study bouts in ultradian rhythmic cycles of 90-120 mins).
From what I've read, non-sleep rest helps memory consolidation considerable over non-rest periods. The hypothesis is that when your brain senses that it's not doing much, it starts to work on memory consolidation.
Activity switching can be beneficial because of the spaced practice effect and mental set. When you come back to the original activity, there's more retrieval going on and you've probably reset any mental set you have. But limited memory consolidation benefits. I doubt if anyone knows for sure what ideal periods of non-sleep rest are (e.g., how long they are, how often you should do them, etc.), although I suspect that people should be resting more often than the average modern person does.
I haven't closely examined Andrew Huberman's claims, but I'm familiar with him. Something to keep in mind with any changes is the relative benefit. Lots of things can improve learning (or impair it). But some of the gains are very small and some are larger, and, in some cases, it's hard to compare tradeoffs with each other. Certainly, evidence from high-performing experts in various domains suggest that 90-120 minutes is in the range of the longest period you would want to be intensely focused on something.
3:07 LOL I am here as an attempt to be better at geometry dash (a game where the only goal is to learn finger tapping patterns and only has one button)
thoughts on some of the videos of sleeping by what i've learned?
salut Benjamin, how about polyphasic sleep patterns, i did, in more calm years of my sleep circumstances, commit to a tri or biphasic sleep schedule, with both more wake time as relaxed and yet powerful perceived states of mind resulting.
i did this for several months at a time and was surprised at the perspective of this (for my then capable circumstances) easy gain.
so in the tri phasic pattern for example i would stay awake for 6 1/2 h, sleep 1 1/2 for three times a day and found myself enjoying to address different tasks to these slots. my productivity was unrivalled high and i also noticed that the sleeping would be a continuation of this productivity, all felt so natural.
i only don't do it anymore because either my schedule is not as flexible, or my current living situation doesn't allow for me to get the sleep when i need it.
my questions, after this long preamble, now are how slow rate phases scale in time (e.g. if i sleep 90 mins, for a presumed full rem cycle)
i'm also reading sara c. mednick's 'take a nap' on power naps, as matthew walker's 'why we sleep', with inconclusive, or rather contradictory views. now knowing these books are from 2006 and 2017 respectively, i wonder if you're aware of updated research : results ?
and lastly, i wondered about lucid dreaming. since i have both made experiences myself of revelations and had peers involved in comparable findings, i have heard of the strain or stress this induces on your recovery and reproduction cycle. are you aware of the latter, or would perhaps even advocate against the extending of said skill ?
I thought this video was going to be about practicing skills in dreams/lucid dreams.
Benjamin, is there any research/evidence that suggests listening to Foreign language speech recordings in your sleep helps you learn language faster? or at least could help with the acquisition/comprehension of specific tones/or pitch accents in the foreign language one is learning?
Thank you :)
I would be extremely skeptical of any claims like that. It would probably just disturb your sleep. Listening to a foreign language when you're awake can help.
I knew a friend who would listen to the international radio stations and pick up pronunciation without understanding just from listening to the cadence of the words and sounds before starting to learn a language. Thought that was interesting idea.
I have a topic suggestion:
What is intuition?
Does it have anything to do with talent,
being a genius, achieving more success and etc?
Thank you.
Very awesome, interesting question. Thanks for suggesting it! Would love to do a video addressing that.
What about a subliminal overnight or a whole book or class and then its All there when we read next day or ask for answer.
4:48 Oh wow, that sounds miserable. When i workout (workedout?) i needed at least 9h to recover and constantly slept 930 or even 10h, it took a while to reduce that to 7 one i stopped training. I think 7 would make me feel awful and dont allow to grow, in all senses of the word, but for a non lifter is enough.
What do You think about N-Back training?
Basically, good for near-transfer learning, not terribly helpful for far transfer. Look for the citation on brain training apps in the description to this video: ua-cam.com/video/WYl-nZyoEXs/v-deo.html
One thing that sucks it's that when you're in the grind energized by 10 coffees a day you can think "this is fine" and dont realize at all you lack rest. If you're not you when hungry you're EVEN LESS you when sleep deprived. I turn into a psychotic paranoid depressed entitled destructive shell of a man when sleepy, it's crazy how the situation IS NOT THAT BAD it's just me acting like a crazy person. The glass is not just empty, it's broken, cut your hand, ruined your clothes and carpet and made a mess.
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