The popular theory of learning during sleep has been explained. Scientists from Cambridge and Paris have come to the conclusion that our brains are always awake. He does not sleep even when we ourselves, as it seems to us, are asleep.
British and French scientists have tried to test the brain function during sleep and while awake using electroencephalograms. The participants in the experiment were offered word tests. It turned out that the brain reacts correctly to words and during our sleep. Efficiency increases dramatically when the task is brought to automatism.
Participants in the experiment were asked to listen to a set of words and, by pressing buttons, separate words into animals (button on the right) and objects (button on the left). They were then placed in a dark room and the experiment repeated, but with their eyes closed and in a prone position when they fell asleep.
At the same time, the set of words changed. This was done so that the brain re-worked the meaning of words.
It turned out that the sleeping person's brain continued to correctly perform the task, although in a dream the reaction, the authors of the experiment write in the journal Current Biology, slowed down. The main thing, they believe, is that the task becomes automatic for the brain. The brain does not perform a task that has not been brought to automaticity during sleep.