The dream of any student seems to come true: Anat Arzi from the Weizmann Institute (Israel) and her colleagues have shown that we are able to learn new information by snoring peacefully.
Researchers used the simplest form of training, which was used by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, developing conditioned reflexes in his charges. Photo by katarina. 55 people went to bed, after which they were fumigated with pleasant (deodorants, shampoos) and unpleasant (rotting fish and meat) odors.
Each fragrance was accompanied by a certain sound. It is well known that sleep plays an important role in consolidating memories, and it has already been shown that this method of developing conditioned reflexes does indeed change people's behavior during sleep: people smell when they hear a sound that corresponds to a pleasant smell.
This time, it turned out that the reflex persists during wakefulness, although the participants in the experiment were completely unaware of the relationship between smells and sounds. The effect was observed regardless of which phase of sleep or wakefulness the subject was in. At the same time, it was noted that the reaction was most pronounced when the reflex was developed during the period of rapid eye movement, that is, in the second half of the night's sleep.
Ms Arzi believes that in exactly the same way we could assimilate more complex information while we sleep. Of course, not everything: you can hardly learn a paragraph on biology this way. In 2009, Tristan Beckinstein, a neuroscientist at the Cognitive and Mental Sciences Division of the UK Medical Research Council, and colleagues reported that some patients who were in a minimally conscious or vegetative state developed a conditioned reflex in the form of blinking in response to breath in the eyes …
These reactions will ultimately help doctors diagnose such neurological conditions and predict which patients have a chance of recovery.
“We have yet to find out whether the same neural networks are responsible for learning during sleep and while awake,” emphasizes Mr. Beckinstein. In addition, "sleep therapy" would help in the treatment of phobias and other types of behavior correction.