This conclusion was reached by scientists after they conducted an experiment with volunteers.
Employees of the University of Bern (Switzerland), using 41 volunteers as an example, showed that implicit memory can be trained in sleep. The work was published in the journal Current Biology.
During sleep, the human brain filters information, allowing you to better remember what you saw during the day. The authors of the study believed that it was impossible to make the brain remember some additional information, but decided to check. They selected 76 participants for the experiment, but only 41 of them passed all the required stages.
They tested the work of implicit (unconscious) memory using the example of a fictional language. During slow-wave sleep, which takes place in four stages and lasts about 80–90 minutes immediately after falling asleep, they played audio recordings for the German-speaking participants in which pairs of words were played: German and its invented analogue. The goal of this approach was to see if such couples would leave a mark on people's implicit memory.
In order to test the anchored relationship, the researchers ran a test on each of the participants after they woke up. They were again spoken words of a non-existent language and asked to imagine objects that could be designated by these words. Then they asked if they had less or more shoeboxes. Such questions, according to scientists, appeal precisely to unconscious memory. One of the original authors of the article, Marc Züst, described this principle as follows:
“Implicit memory is difficult to identify. Our task was to get to the bottom of implicit and unconscious memories through questions about the semantic properties of new words. If you say "biktum" and "bird" to sleeping people, their brain can establish a connection between a known concept and a completely new one. This trace manifests itself during the waking period and can affect how a person reacts to "biktum", even if he himself believes that he has never met him before."
The researchers found that the participants correctly classified the object size of the unknown words, but their answers were only 10 percent more accurate than random. A memory test was performed during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Scans showed that the hippocampus was activated during responses, and the authors recognized this as further evidence of implicit memory.
Now scientists cannot say whether such a method will contribute to faster memorization of information explicitly (consciously), but they hope that in the future it will help people with various cognitive impairments.
Promotional video:
Previously, researchers from the University of California, San Diego conducted experiments with people with disabilities in the temporal lobe of the brain. They showed a link between normal hippocampal function and explicit memory.
Alexey Evglevsky