Study Suggests You Can Learn New Things In Your Sleep 99
bbianca127 writes "Researchers studied classical conditioning in 55 study participants while sleeping or awake. According to the article, 'Classical conditioning teaches a person or animal to associate one stimulus with another.' The researchers paired tones with scents; when they played a tone, they would let out a particular scent while the participants were sleeping. They found that the participants would make the association between the tones and scents even while awake."
I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
My sleepy lectures weren't wasting time after all.
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I guess it really does help to put the textbook under your pillow the night before the exam.
in some lectures staying up does not help much (Score:2)
in some lectures staying up does not help much anyways even more so for the ones that just reading from the book.
Re:in some lectures staying up does not help much (Score:4, Funny)
Definition Lecture were information passes from the Lecturer's notes to the student's notes without passing through the mind of either.
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I believe it. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about 10 years ago. I got maybe 10-15 minutes of REM sleep a night (which isn't enough.)
Basically I was so sleep deprived that I was sleeping all the time. I was constantly sleeping in lectures and even sometimes through lab sessions.
Oddly enough I averaged a high B/low A score. My peers weren't too happy when they saw me sleeping all the time and getting scores they were struggling to get.
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inb4 fart jokes
(as in, "My wife knows the sound of music")
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I don't really sleep on lectures, but in high school I snoozed a lot during classes. Strangely enough you can memorize stuff better if you are in a half asleep state.
I only make one tone and scent when I sleep (Score:5, Funny)
And nobody wants to learn it.
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I wonder what wounder means?
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Re:I only make one tone and scent when I sleep (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, the forlorn single note of the vuvuzela and mice quietly gagging.
Of course, dreaming is powerful (Score:1)
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The fact that you remember your dream suggests you did, in fact, learn something.
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I guess my "of course" only implies that I support the conclusion and that I learned something. Makes sense how my comment is confusing, I only mean the broader aspects of the subconscious "can't quite be quantified yet." Thanks for the info exchange.
I don't think dreaming really has as much to do with the subconscious as people think it does. When I was a kid I wanted to learn to ride my bike with no hands, but was too scared of crashing and getting hurt to actually try it. One night I was dreaming about riding my bike, realized I was dreaming, and decided to try it with no hands. The next day I got up, went out, and rode with no hands. I was simply visualizing what I wanted to do, just like an athlete preparing for a competition visualizes their actio
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When I was a kid I wanted to learn to ride my bike with no hands, but was too scared of crashing and getting hurt to actually try it. One night I was dreaming about riding my bike, realized I was dreaming, and decided to try it with no hands. The next day I got up, went out, and rode with no hands. I was simply visualizing what I wanted to do, just like an athlete preparing for a competition visualizes their actions ahead of time to prepare. The fact that I was asleep was basically not relevant, other than I was able to visualize the detail much more vividly.
When I was a kid I wanted to be able to fly, but couldn't figure out how to do it. One night I was dreaming about riding my bike, realized I was dreaming, and decided to try making my bike fly. Unfortunately, the technique didn't work when I woke up the next day.
Moral of the story: lucid dreaming is great for visualizing what you want to do and for seeing things in great detail -- it however is not limited by the laws of physics, and logic is sometimes suspended. As such, you can "learn" things while dre
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Why, just last night I had a dream reminding me about watering my plant that's dying.
Hope you washed the sheets
Omelette... (Score:5, Funny)
...du fromage!
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This is not offtopic. It's an obscure reference to Dexter's Lab, and the first thing I thought of when I read this headline.
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au fromage :P
(But yes, I remember the Dexter's lab episode, and Parent is *ON*topic)
Simpsons did it. (Score:5, Funny)
Marge: Homer, has the weight loss tape reduced your appetite?
Homer: Ah, lamentably no. My gastronomic rapacity knows no satieties.
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So... the logical conclusion: (Score:2)
Tape your eyes open and fall asleep under infographic posters.
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Pavlovian Conditioning is not Learning (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a lot closer to Hypnosis or Brainwashing, in fact.
The funny thing about Hypnosis, is that it comes from Hypnos, meaning Sleep, meaning they proved you are far more suggestible when sleeping...
which we already knew.
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Doesn't matter what you call it, so long as you learn it.
I once tried studying Icelandic with audio tapes in my sleep. The problem was, I simply could neither fall asleep nor stay asleep with it on. My brain just had too much hearing taking in language that it had trouble with without calling my full attention into processing it.
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If conditioning isn't learning, then what is learning? And what is the difference between brainwashing and learning?
I learn stuff in my dreams. (Score:3)
First I thought this article was cool, but it's not, so i'm going to try to spice it up.
When I was 16 and taking drivers ed, i was in a position in my life where I either had to practice on a huge tank of a car (automatic) or drive my sisters VW Bug (stick). Well, my sister always stressed out and yelled at me, and the owner of the other car was always busy, so i didn't do too much practicing of my driving.
So, just before the test, i had a dream where I was driving a stick, and it was a stress free enviroment and I was seeing how it went. How it felt to let the clutch out, switch the gear, etc.
Anyways, after that, I didn't have a problem driving stick shifts anymore. Ya, of course, someone might point out that I learned how to drive the stick in RL, but got the necessary practice in my dreams. So fuck you, I beat ya to it.
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I did the exact same thing. I tried driving a stick for real when I was 18 (for some reason I never had to drive a stick during Driver's Ed) and stalled out a car while trying to make a left turn on a busy street... that was scary. Weeks later I had a dream about driving a stick, and so I gave it a try again... and haven't had any problems since.
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The more plausible answer is that you simply aren't stupid. The light weight of the vehicle, the noisy engine (you sure don't need a tach in a Bug), and simple H-pattern made the VW Beetle one of the easiest of all manual transmissions to drive.
Sticks are actually very easy to learn, despite their undeserved reputation. The only skill most people lack is confidence - once they understand that the pedal takes a smooth touch, but the gear lever takes a decisive action, they're good to go.
I also learned to d
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Sticks are actually very easy to learn
That's not entirely true. It's easy to make a stick shift vehicle make it's way down the road, but it's an entirely different proposition to do it correctly and actually match the RPMs. Then throw in heel-and-toeing, skipping gears, and accelerating quickly (while still smoothly) and it's an art that almost no driver does to perfection except maybe Jackie Stewart. Hell, I doubt most modern F1 drivers can drive a stick to perfection as they all drive semi-autos these days.
Also, it really depends on the car.
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If you weren't an AC I'd explain it to you. Instead, here's one of the first videos YouTube pulled up on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcxHi6FlGLo [youtube.com]
btw, speed and revs are correlated - for example, on my go-to-work car, 5th gear at 3k RPM will always be 60 mph. So, you actually are depending on the speed to judge which gear to use whether you realize it or not. 5th gear at 10mph = stall (unless you gotta shit ton of torque and a gearbox geared super high).
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The machismo aside, I still can't imagine why anyone would willingly want to repeatedly perform such touchy and precise control manipulations. These are clearly a machine or computer's job. I mean, I respect folks who do it, and I can understand it being "fun", it's just so impractical.
I mean, nobody using a modern computer does an IPL by hand when they turn their computer on anymore.
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1. It's safer, especially in crappy conditions. In the snow I can keep my RPMs low so I don't have to worry about the tires spinning. Going into a turn I can downshift BEFORE the turn, which an automatic can't do (same applies for hills).
2. Once it becomes muscle memory it's not so difficult to do it well. The problem is most people learn to do it incorrectly. Perfection isn't really attainable for most, but almost anyone can do it well if they're taught correctly.
3. As you stated, it's fun.
4. Going back to
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I still can't imagine why anyone would willingly want to repeatedly perform such touchy and precise control manipulations.
I used to be a horrible driver.
Seriously bad, as in, I wrecked four cars in two years.Thankfully never causing any bodily harm to anyone. Of course, that was when I was 16, but I fault this largely on my inability to focus while driving an automatic. I would *space out* while driving on straight roads for long periods of time or even sometimes when going through repetitive stop-and-go traffic. The first car I bought with a manual transmission changed my life- I never had a wreck again and it's been ten ye
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You ignored the details of the GP post. He wasn't trying to qualify for NASCAR, he wasn't learning in a BMW, he wasn't trying out to be the next Jason Statham. He needed to pass a driver's license test, and he believed he did it thanks to the dreamworld. At that initial stage of learning, matching RPMs is barely even required, as driving test examiners aren't judging proficiency, just adequacy. And acquiring that much skill on a stick really takes no more than a practice drive or two.
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FWIW, you should go easy on the gear lever (while there's no need to be gentle with the clutch in any situation other than starting, it just causes the clutch to wear out more quickly). Being 'decisive' with the gear lever will shorten the transmission's lifespan, the slower you s
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Decisive does not mean hamfisted, or pounding the stick like it owes you money. It simply means confidence.
I've seen kids learning who take it out of second gear, then contemplate the H pattern, then push it over, then tentatively push it sort-of up, then let up on the clutch to the sound of unmeshed gears, then push a little harder... Confidence means moving the stick where it has to go in a timely fashion. Getting a learner past that hurdle is a key step in learning stick.
Learning new things? (Score:4)
My point: they discovered that, while asleep, the brain is able to reinforce and create relations between the things/experiences learned while awake? If so, how is this new [wikipedia.org]?
Shouldn't be a surprise (Score:3)
There's plenty of stuff that I've been taught, but simply didn't understand. But could understand it after a night of sleep, heck. I've been woken up by those flashes of "oh shit, I get it" moments as the brain is working through something very complex that my conscious mind couldn't grasp. I believe that would fall under the "learning while you're asleep."
Bertrand Russell did it (Score:2)
"Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my sub-consciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what had appeared as if in a revelation."
http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/russell/russell.php?name=how.i.write [davemckay.co.uk]
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Yes, whilst studying maths I've long learnt that doing assignments last minute isn't a good idea, not because you may run out of time in the classic sense, but because you might run out of nights where you can sleep on the more difficult problems.
I tended to find if I work through an assignment, and get really stuck, the best thing to do is sleep on it. The next day I'll have figured much of it out in my head.
Interestingly I find water to have a similar effect, showering, bathing, or swimming underwater bri
We did this (Score:3)
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But I know at least 50 things you can do with a VegOMatic.
What I've learned in my sleep (Score:3, Funny)
You insensitive clod! (Score:3)
I'm a porn star.
Like ... (Score:4, Funny)
The Nile is the longest river ... (Score:3)
I believe there was a pretty good statement of how this worked in Brave New World. There was enough information available then (1931) to say that this didn't work worth a damn.
People haven't changed much since 1931 and what didn't work then doesn't work now. However, the idea that this could be used to influence people (rather than to educate them) has not really been explored to any depth. Sure, it might work. There is some evidence that the "self confidence" tapes from long ago (1960s?) had some effect or at least people were buying them for "sleep improvement". However, this has the rather nasty implications of "programming" people and the unfortunate ways this could be utilized. Also explored by Brave New World as it was pretty obvious how this could be misused back then.
Lucid dreams (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Well.... (Score:3)
I've solved problems while sleeping... including one memorable time where I found a solution to one particular computer bug in some software I was writing that had been troubling me for a few days (the error in my dream, and in reality, turned out to be caused by a mistyped condition that was executed very infrequently, and which was simply missing a boolean negation). Of course, the reasonable explanation for this is that because I had seen the code so many times by that point, my eyes had already viewed the error, I had simply not previously recognized it as such. Somehow, this manifested in a dream where I was working on the program, and happened to catch the error. I don't know exactly why I recognized the error in my dream, but I know that the only reason I spotted the error in real life was because I remembered that dream and decided to look at the applicable place in the code. Nonethless, that was a really bizarre experience... one I'm sure I'll never forget.
But I can't really say I've ever *LEARNED* anything new while sleeping though... only at most, discovered new ways of thinking about things that I really did already know.
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Just imagine a day when the tech exists to enable us to work in our sleep. About two days after the tech is introduced, it will be mandatory.
It's True (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an anecdote but it's a fairly convincing one:
I once had a roommate who was a sports fanatic who worked as a server in a sports bar/restaurant at the time. He would listened to sports radio while he slept - usually it was the west coast baseball games (we're in EST) - and he claimed that the broadcasters would basically narrate his dreams of baseball. He knew most the players so if he heard something like, "Bonds hits it to center field, he slides to first and is safe," it's something he could envision realistically.
It's easy to dismiss this as a wild claim he made, but the proof was in the pudding. He could, with confidence, talk about the games the next day before hearing/seeing anything about them. He knew the scores, the big plays, damn near everything as well as if he had watched it on TV. His customers ate it up - they'd love to put him to the test before the highlights would show up on the tube.
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Ghostbusters did it! (Score:2)
Ray: Listen! Do you smell something? [youtube.com]
This is real... (Score:2)
When we were playing Q2 regularly, maybe 10 years ago, we noticed you completely knew a new map after "sleeping on it".
Works for math, too; just don't learn to do something wrong and go to sleep, lol.
Yep. (Score:1)
That Explains It! (Score:1)
Absolutely correct! (Score:1)
I am tellin' ya, it is the way I've learned everything! :-D
I wonder then, (Score:2)
known this since I was 12 (Score:2)
it's how I learned French to the point where I aced my GCSE in French at 13.
At the suggestion of my teacher, I played French movies and language tapes (prerecorded during lessons) while I slept. Came to the oral exam, my responses were "natural, instant and almost accentless" according to the examiner.
This is really promising (Score:1)
People have been listening to tapes at night for years and learning nothing. Somebody suddenly gets a Pavlovian response and the promise of a PhD while you snore leaps into some journalistic mind. Please, there are far more advances in anti-gravity and time travel that make more interesting reading.
But the coursework is always the same (Score:2)
much more interesting story (Score:2)
Also, since there's a popular theory that dreams are merely simulations of situations that your brain can practice
How not to wet the bed.... (Score:2)
Just play some recording telling the children that they should wake up and use the restroom when they feel the need to go potty.