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Practical advice for sleep learning | ||
Tags: Sleep | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 25 of 32 06 September 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recent scientific research published about a week ago in the prestigious journal Nature suggests that people can learn in their sleep, and can reinforce daytime learning in their sleep. What was "learned" in this research was a whole lot less complex than a second language. But it looks like they have demonstrated that, in principle, the brain can learn during sleep. And note that the participants were actually unaware that they had learned anything. This might apply to learning the sounds and tones of a language, and subconsciously improving listening and pronunciation
http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-learn-in-your-sleep-1.1127 4 Edited by tommus on 06 September 2012 at 7:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 26 of 32 06 September 2012 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I am very sorry, but this article is about scientific research. You can check this: Cued memory reactivation during sleep influences skill learning. Antony, J. W., Gobel E. W., O'Hare J. K., Reber P. J., & Paller K. A. (2012). Nature Neuroscience. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n8/full/nn.3152.html Abstract Information acquired during waking can be reactivated during sleep, promoting memory stabilization. After people learned to produce two melodies in time with moving visual symbols, we enhanced relative performance by presenting one melody during an afternoon nap. Electrophysiological signs of memory processing during sleep corroborated the notion that appropriate auditory stimulation that does not disrupt sleep can nevertheless bias memory consolidation in relevant brain circuitry. Memory stabilization with targeted reactivation during human slow-wave sleep. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109(26), 10575 - 10580. van Dongen, E. V., Takashima A., Barth M., Zapp J., Schad L. R., Paller K. A., et al. (2012). http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10575 Abstract It is believed that neural representations of recent experiences become reactivated during sleep, and that this process serves to stabilize associated memories in long-term memory. Here, we initiated this reactivation process for specific memories during slow-wave sleep. Participants studied 50 object-location associations with object-related sounds presented concurrently. For half of the associations, the related sounds were re-presented during subsequent slow-wave sleep while participants underwent functional MRI. Compared with control sounds, related sounds were associated with increased activation of right parahippocampal cortex. Postsleep memory accuracy was positively correlated with sound-related activation during sleep in various brain regions, including the thalamus, bilateral medial temporal lobe, and cerebellum. In addition, postsleep memory accuracy was also positively correlated with pre- to postsleep changes in parahippocampal–medial prefrontal connectivity during retrieval of reactivated associations. Our results suggest that the brain is differentially activated by studied and unstudied sounds during deep sleep and that the thalamus and medial temporal lobe are involved in establishing the mnemonic consequences of externally triggered reactivation of associative memories. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 27 of 32 06 September 2012 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I wake up, I can't even remember the dream I was having three minutes ago. I find it really hard to believe my brain is storing the audio I hear during my sleep, yet discards everything else in its daily memory wipe of my dreams. I've spent about a third of my life sleeping, and 99.99% of my memories are from the other two thirds of my life.
Sleep is very important for the language learner, because sleep helps our short-term memories become incorporated into our long-term memory. But we are not creating hardly any new memories during the process of sleep; what new memories are created are quickly discarded by the brain, since otherwise our minds would be completely cluttered with dream memories that could be easily confused for real memories. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5959 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 28 of 32 06 September 2012 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Okay, this is a bit unnerving…. Approximately one week ago, I as well dreamt of being in that same room, with those same two sofas (though in my dream I acknowledged them as chesterfields rather than sofas or couches, as I - or at least my body - was in Canada at the time of the dreaming). There were two French women on one of the chesterfields wearing hats, and one said to the other “As you know, in my clenched fist I hold the secret to learning and understanding the French language.” Desperate for this information, I cried out in Irish, which is just weird because I don’t speak Irish, “Show me!” and she opened her hand slowly and I saw that it was empty, and then they both laughed malevolently, with one turning to me and saying, “Why can you not understand, you silly rabbit, that it is utterly impossible to learn French“ and then I looked down at myself in my dream and realized I was a rabbit, which is how most of my dreams end. About sleep learning: while it is undoubtedly safer than sleep driving (which works really poorly - I speak from experience while driving across the prairies), I believe it would be appropriate to proceed cautiously before assuming that falling asleep with an mp3 player replicates the methodology of either of the studies. I say this not having read the articles, but the abstracts suggest that stimulation below the level of sleep interference is the goal - the second abstract specifically mentions slow-wave sleep (where the arousal threshold is the highest). iPhones do not yet have an app for identifying slow-wave sleep and pausing or adjusting the volume of the Michel Thomas or Pimsleur recordings accordingly. Absent that level of precision, I wonder whether the risk of sleep interference would not arise with a consequent or at least possible negative effect on the normal learning and memory process. Edited by Spanky on 06 September 2012 at 11:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5568 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 29 of 32 06 September 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is no need to be sorry (unless you are not and that was just a rhetorical
device). However, whilst I accept that there is research which shows that limited Pavlovian style conditioning works even in sleep (which is what those articles are about), it is a long way away from making large leaps of faith to remembering and acquiring a language during sleep. For that we still have http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai? verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0422832 as evidence that sleep learning is not possible. The abstracts discuss a form of 'learning' that is a long way away from the sleep learning being discussed in this post and promoted by sleep learning mountebanks and their mythical 'power of the subconcious mind' mumbo jumbo. As the scientist in the Nature article cited above says: “This does not imply that you can place your homework under the pillow and know it in the morning,”. That says it all. Anyway, if one wants to stick one's Assimil on whilst one sleeps, fine, it can't hurt (save you may not get to sleep), but there is no evidence (especially not in the abstracts presented here) that it will help. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 30 of 32 06 September 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pavlovian style?
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n8/abs/nn.3152.html
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5568 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 31 of 32 06 September 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Isn't this experiment describing the form of learning known as classical (aka
Pavlovian) conditioning? - which, ok, is a form of learning, but it is not the same as putting Assimil Japanese on your Iphone at night and, somehow like Keanu Reeves from the Matrix, waking up and knowing Japanese'? 'Auditory stimulation biasing memory consolidation' sounds like rather like this paradigm of recent research: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120826143531.ht m rather than this http://www.sleeplearning.com/ i.e. waking study = sniff a scent - bell - sniff a scent - bell - sniff a scent - bell (link proved by certain brain pattern in electrophysiological imagining) sleeping = bell - sniff response - bell - sniff response - bell - sniff response (link to original scent proved by same/similar brain pattern in electrophysiological imagining) I will grant that the classical conditioning of the experiment is a form of 'learning' but that is not the same as the sleep learning being discussed here as 'proved' by citing a bunch of inapposite research to the issue. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6678 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 32 of 32 07 September 2012 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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The usual straw man fallacy starts running.
Sleep learning boost your learning, but it doesn't substitute it. If you use an mp3 player, you can put your earphones under the pillow. Tune in its volume just enough to hear something. If the recording is playing all night, you will cover all sleep phases. Just in case... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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