
Can a Person Learn While Sleeping? - prostoalex
https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-a-person-learn-while-sleeping-11552744800
======
cimmanom
> Half the students were allowed to go to sleep while the words were played
> back to them. The other half stayed awake while listening to the words. ...
> Researchers found that those who had listened to the words while sleeping
> retained much more than those who didn’t sleep.

Did they compare to a group who slept without listening to the words? I'm
curious whether the playback actually had any effect or whether it was just
sleeping right after learning that did it.

~~~
hanniabu
It also might not be "learning while sleeping" but "learning before sleeping".

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lialuna
I’m 33, when I was ~17 I took a discrete math course. During class teacher
posed a challenge- to find algorithm for minimal number of cross beams to make
an n by m lattice rigid, so it can’t flex like a parallelogram because
triangles are fixing angles. I was asleep, realized I was dreaming, and
decided to “work” on the problem. I found a solution, woke up and wrote it
down. I think it was helpful to be dreaming because usually I cannot visualize
more than simple shape, but while dreaming, I could try things out without
using paper and pencil.

~~~
ToonDoom
During my maths degree I would often try to solve problems last thing at
night. If I could not solve a problem. I’d Go to sleep. I would have no
recollection of solving the problem but in the morning I would often be able
to immediately solve the problem.

This could have been down to a fresh brain but the speed at which I would
solve the problem in the morning and pretty much just know the solution I’m
convinced I was solving the problem in my sleep and then basically just
writing it down when I woke.

~~~
bergerjac
This! The subconscious mind is FAR more powerful than the conscious mind..

It's the part of the mind which is always operating.. A sure-fire tactic is to
ask yourself a question right before bed, and allow it to do it's thing

~~~
ficklepickle
You nailed it. Most of the time, we don't even know why we just did a
particular action. Our subconscious expresses an urge, and we usually just do
it. Afterwards, our conscious mind rationalizes the decision with some sort of
logic which people will defend to the death.

It is possible to communicate with the subconscious. In fact, it is always
communicating with us. Our society is so focused on the conscious mind that we
tend to not notice. This is what anxiety is. The subconscious is trying to
express an unmet need. The medical field tries to suppress and numb the
symptoms instead of listening to your body.

Source: Nobody told me this. I discovered this while dealing with massive
personal problems over many years. Operating under this assumption is how I
overcame serious addiction, anxiety and depression. Meditation is a good way
to calm to conscious mind so you can "hear" your subconscious and body.

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miguelmota
Thomas Edison would sleep on a chair holding two steel balls that would drop
as he was about to enter REM sleep and wake him up so that he can immediately
write down ideas he learned of while sleeping.

~~~
eismcc
I recall Picasso would nap with a spoon for the same purpose.

~~~
gurtwo
I believe it was Dali

~~~
eismcc
Seems so, thanks.

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scottlegrand2
When I'm studying a subject intensely, the subject matter tends to invade my
dreams, often when I'm confused by some detail I need to resolve for myself
before proceeding further.

~~~
zeta0134
I still have this happen quite frequently when I'm mentally working through a
tough programming problem, especially if that problem involves a lot of moving
parts. It's like my mind is organizing its understanding of the problem during
a dream, so I get bits and pieces of it.

Sometimes this leads to useful insights, but much more often I think I've
solved some problem in my dream, only to wake up and immediately realize that
the solution makes no sense at all. Once I do wake up though, I find that if I
give myself a moment to rest and then come at the problem again, I can re-
contextualize much more quickly and make quick work of the issue.

------
gre

      exercising well before bedtime
    

Get good exercise close to bedtime or exercise earlier in the day?

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Probably the latter; it's a common "sleep hygiene" recommendation to avoid
unnecessary exertion close to bedtime.

(scare quotes because it's really a slippery self-help kind of term that
people use as though it has some concrete scientific meaning)

~~~
matwood
I suggest people try it and see how they react. I can exercise before bed just
fine, but I can't do anything competitive because I get too amped up.

~~~
ct520
I'm exact same way, hit the gym for half a decade 6 days a week right before
bed. No issue sleeping, but put me in front of a intense video game before bed
time and I'm up for hours.

~~~
1001101
Could be the adrenaline.

~~~
ct520
yeah I think so.

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jayalpha
If you are learning Chinese and want to try, I created a file a while ago. I
downloaded a youtube video (sorry, can't give creds, don't have the link
anymore), extracted the audio and added a long silence at the beginning, so
that I actually can start sleeping. Have not tried it yet but will tonight.

Good luck: [https://ufile.io/577bn](https://ufile.io/577bn)

~~~
poglet
Will give this a try, thanks. Do you use any other techniques?

~~~
jayalpha
I started using anki too late. Repetitive vocabulary learning is a must. Start
using Anki from the beginning.

~~~
new_user8675309
Also trying to learn. Any decks you'd recommend?

~~~
jayalpha
[https://blog.timo-horstschaefer.de/chinese-anki-deck/](https://blog.timo-
horstschaefer.de/chinese-anki-deck/)

~~~
new_user8675309
Thank you!

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neonate
[https://outline.com/Z8Nq7e](https://outline.com/Z8Nq7e)

~~~
systemtrigger
[https://www.outline.com/dmca.html](https://www.outline.com/dmca.html)

~~~
hombre_fatal
> Because all DMCA notifications must be based on a work for which the
> copyright is registered with the Copyright Office (or for which registration
> has been applied for), and because a high percentage of DMCA takedown
> notices are not valid, it will speed our investigation of your DMCA notice
> if you attach to it a copy of your copyright registration, or registration
> application, for the work.

> DMCA notifications based on unregistered works are not valid.

Heh, would only be cheekier if their DMCA <form> had file upload inputs for
copyright_docs and registration_docs.

Outline seems exclusively used as a paywall bypass system in the wild. Can't
be good for their longterm viability.

~~~
tyingq
_" Can't be good for their longterm viability"_

Any know if/how they make money?

~~~
hombre_fatal
It's surely just in its bootstrapped growth stage.

If it wasn't for its annotation system, I'd put it in the realm of rather
straightforward side projects. There are really good "readability mode"
transformer libraries out there. And you can imagine buying a subscription to
each of the major publications to bypass their paywall.

Paywall bypassing is something I would've expected from archiving services too
but I noticed this is perhaps false. For example,
[http://archive.is/ycfsk](http://archive.is/ycfsk) archived the paywall.

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dfee
What about the opposite? I recently (past few years) have no problem thinking
and solving problems while I sleep. Surely this is something a younger me
strived for.

How can I turn back to fantastic dreams, adventures and generally things of
pleasure?

~~~
bergerjac
Why don't you ask yourself that same question right before bed one night..
'Ask and you shall receive'

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ineedasername
Sometimes when I'm working on a problem I'll put my head down and relax,
breath deep, and try to get myself to nap. At the same time I think about the
problem. I often find a solution that way, something about the semi-conscious
brain storming works well that way. And when it doesn't, at least I had a
relaxing nap :)

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sakopov
I remember listening Rogan's podcast on the subject of sleep with Matthew
Walker, who is a professor of Neuroscience at Berkley. Hopefully I'm not
making stuff up as it's been a while, but he talked about a study where each
subject was given a task to learn while their brain activity was being
recorded. The study found that the same areas of the brain that flared up
during the learning and memorization processes were also very active during
sleep, as if the brain was replaying the same activity over and over again.

Edit: adding link to the podcast if anyone's interested -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig)

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chiefalchemist
Often, too often, I forget to set the sleep timer and fall asleep with the TV
on. Often enough to notice, what's on TV shows up in my dreams (in some form).

I'm not sure if I could learn but I bet I could prime my brain with basics
(e.g., vocabulary words in my non-native language).

~~~
Cyphase
I remember once having a dream where I was fighting off bad guys like a ninja,
with Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" playing as soundtrack (which had been in
the Daredevil movie). When I woke up, I realized I'd fallen asleep with the
song playing on a loop.

Coincidentally, the words "wake me up" and "I can't wake up" are said a total
of 18 times in the song; I wonder what effect that had on me.

 _considers an experiment_

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rjf72
I feel headlines like this can be answered using simple logic. Most people
want to learn many things, but are lazy. Learning while you sleep would solve
this. It would be an absolutely enormous industry.

 _Want to know French, but too lazy ( "busy") to learn it? Listen to this
magical audio file before/during sleep and in just x weeks you can amaze your
friends and neighbors with your positively paralyzing parlezing without any of
the work! Order now, just $xxx!_

So the answer is going to range between a plain "no" and a "kind of sort of in
a way that can, at best, work as an extremely modest supplement to conscious
learning, under best conditions." And you need not worry about missing out on
some cutting edge breakthrough. If and when such things happens this would be
really really big news - not something restricted to a random classically
clickbaited headline with the actual article hidden behind a paywall.

I just mention this because I think our inclination is to let our curiosity
get the best of us, and of course - what if there's something we've missed out
on? But in the process of this, we greatly incentivize this form of faux
journalism. And the nice thing is is that the above logic can be applied to
absolutely huge swaths of the entire media.

------
jedberg
When I was in college, I took a Psychology class called "Altered states of
conscienceness". The whole class was about how we learn and function under
hypnosis, under the influence of drugs, when sleeping, etc. The overall theme
of the class was that your body is always processing inputs from your senses,
and different states of mind help you process differently by filtering certain
things out while amplifying other things. But the same state of mind would
have different outcomes for different people.

So the answer to this question is: Depends on the person, but there is nothing
in the way the body works that would prevent you from learning while sleeping.

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pedro1976
Without reading the article sleeping is part of learning [0]. One idea of
lucid dreaming is to "learn" during sleep.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181017190008/https://www.super...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181017190008/https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep)

~~~
pedalpete
I've been trying this for about 18 months now and I rarely get it, but when I
do, it's really magical. I am yet to be able to "learn" anything though. I try
to search my mind for what I was supposed to do when I reach a lucid dreaming
state, and that waakes me up.

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_red
A common thing that happens to me is: Stuck on a moderately complex problem,
usually in a field that I'm not intimately familiar with (ie. A complex mail
server config). Work on it, feeling frustrated late into evening. Go to sleep
and sort of "dream about the problem" in a loosely chaotic way.

Come morning, its not that I suddenly have a solution, but more often than not
I've developed a good strategy for how to test the problem. By using this new
method I'm able then to trial-and-error the problem in a systemic way, leading
to a solution.

TLDR: Sleeping often gives me successful 'approaches' to problems

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KorematsuFred
I do all the time. Many times I am working on some bug or some complex issue.
I give up on the problem for the day I go home, sleep and early morning (for
some reason its always early morning) I actually solve the problem with minute
details. When I wake up I know what the issue is. Happens at least once a
month to me.

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davesque
My anecdotal experience with this comes from learning musical instruments.
I've come to believe that the brain does a fair bit of rewiring when you're
not paying attention to something you're trying to learn. This happens when
sleeping or otherwise.

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dschuetz
I remember learning riding a bicycle in a dream. Woke up the next day and
suddenly I could ride a bicycle, despite months of struggle without success.
So, I guess sometimes it takes one especially lucid dream to solve an
initially "unsolvable" problem.

~~~
sonnhy
For how cool it sounds, it seems more like you have managed to overcome the
struggle than learning to ride a bike, as in you jumped on the bike for the
first time in your life, in your dream, and the day after you could ride a
bike in real life.

~~~
dschuetz
That's what I basically meant - sometimes one dream is enough to move on. Not
only rational problems are being solved inside the brain while asleep. I
believe that dreaming of riding a bike like it was effortless made me believe
that it's actually effortless and voila, it worked.

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dane-pgp
Obligatory Simpsons reference:

[https://frinkiac.com/caption/S03E23/713809](https://frinkiac.com/caption/S03E23/713809)

~~~
andrepd
Curse this chicanery!

