Shots - Health Blog Can You Learn While You're Asleep?
Originally published on Fri August 31, 2012 8:44 am If you're a
student, you may have harbored the fantasy of learning lessons
while you sleep. Who wouldn't want to stick on a pair of
headphones, grab some shut-eye with a lesson about, say, Chinese
history playing in his ears — and wake up with newly acquired
knowledge of the Ming Dynasty? Sadly, it doesn't work. The
history lesson either keeps you from going to sleep, or it
doesn't — in which case you don't learn it. But researchers may
have taken the first baby step to making the fantasy come true:
In an unusual experiment published in Nature Neuroscience,
researchers Anat Arzi, Ilana Hairston and others showed that
people are capable of learning simple lessons while fast asleep.
The researchers sprayed volunteers with pleasant and unpleasant
smells while they were fast asleep. Exactly like people who are
awake, the sleeping volunteers took bigger breaths when there
was a pleasant smell and a smaller br