Is remembering in a dream possible? During sleep, the brain can remember large amounts of information

Sleep training or “hypnopaedia” (from the Greek hypnos (sleep) and paideia (learning)) came to us from Ancient India, where it was practiced by yogis and Buddhist monks. The essence of the technique was to listen to a voice during sleep, which immersed a person in the light phase of natural sleep.

The effectiveness of hypnopedia directly depended on personality, personal factors, age, intellectual development and level of preparedness. It is difficult to talk about introducing this method to the masses. It is more like a dietary supplement than a magic pill for learning English.

What do the authors base their hypotheses on?

It all started in the 19th and 20th centuries with such famous personalities as Svyadoshch A.M. and Bliznichenko K.V. It was their works that served as the foundation for modern authors. At the heart of most more or less well-developed techniques, sleep phases play a key role. We have two of them: the REM sleep phase, where information is received or recalled (4-5 times per night) and the slow sleep phase, where information is processed and assimilated. In these phases, declarative and semantic memory comes into play. The first stores data, and the second systematizes it.

Experiment results from Mosalingua

The Mosalingua experiment was carried out over 14 days among men and women of different age groups. Let me immediately note that these are the test results of their application for learning English in your sleep. So we will rely on their honesty and openness of data. I’ll just give an excerpt from the infographic.

I will also note a couple more interesting observations revealed during the experiment. Men were more susceptible to remembering information during sleep than women (75% versus 60%). The ratio of women and men was almost equal. The group aged 18-30 showed the greatest effectiveness (80% began to remember words and phrases better). The results themselves turned out to be quite predictable. I'll translate it literally:

Nothing can replace active learning during waking hours, because memorizing new words and phrases in a foreign language requires extreme attention and concentration. However, for many people, repeating a previously learned word or phrase in your sleep helps you remember it more effectively.

What is usually suggested to be studied

Modern methods are offered for night study: words, phrases, cliches, small dialogues on various topics and even reading rules, which should be reproduced at a calm, moderate pace. The authors do not recommend giving a large amount of information due to the heavy load on the brain, due to which the student usually becomes overtired and lacks sleep.

Typical algorithms for memorizing in sleep

Most techniques include 4 basic steps that allow you to “effectively” learn English in your sleep. Usually the student needs:

1. Listen to an audio recording where words or expressions are pronounced with translation. Write down on a piece of paper those English words and expressions that were heard in the recording, but without translation.
2. Before you go to the side, you need to listen to the recording several times. The first few hours of our sleep are the times when we usually don't dream and the brain is at rest. He is not able to learn new things, only to react to what he has already heard or felt somewhere.
3. After listening to new material several times, the recording is turned off. The student then tries to relax and fall asleep. After which the recording starts again, but on constant repeat.
4. Having woken up, the student tries to remember and translate words and expressions on paper on his own.

Bliznichenko's technique

Now compare the typical approach described above with Bliznichenko’s technique. There is a difference, of course, but there is no talk of any pure study in a dream:

1. The required material is read, then listened to on the radio, and repeated loudly by the student after the announcer; All activities are accompanied by soothing music.
2. After a quarter of an hour, you should turn off the lights and go to bed. At this time, the announcer continues to read the text, repeating the spoken phrases three times; The voice gradually becomes quieter, becoming barely audible.
3. In the morning, the announcer reads the text again, but with increasing sound; the music wakes up the sleeping people, followed by a control test to check the material learned.

How our brain works during the day

Having woken up in the morning and gained strength, we begin to receive new information, perceive it with interest, remember it, make our own conclusions and research. It is in the morning that our brain is most ready to work, learn new things, understand, perceive and react.

The afternoon is a time of rest when we should give ourselves a little break. After lunch, we return to our business, our brain gets back to work, but now it wants to change its type of activity and do things we already know, to process the information already received.

Evening is time that we can devote to ourselves, our hobbies, spiritual development, family, and entertainment. From 22.00 to 02.00 our nervous system rests, the so-called “golden hours of sleep” occur. From 02:00 we begin to dream, and our brain begins to work actively again. In a dream we can see our fears, experiences, dreams, events. In a dream, the right decision may come to us that did not occur to us during the daytime.

Anyone can learn to train their brain, adjust it to their convenient schedule. An important condition is not only to load our brain, but also to allow it to rest. Some useful reading on this topic:

• “The work of the brain: strengthening and activation, or how to stay sane” - Gennady Kibardin.
• “Lectures on the work of the cerebral hemispheres” - Pavlov I. P.
• “How the Brain Works” - Steven Pinker.

So is sleep learning even possible?

Yes and no. In a dream, you consolidate and assimilate previously received information. New information needs to be obtained while awake, because as the Mosalingua experiment showed, only 28% had positive results in learning new words in their sleep. Do not be fooled by slogans that you can learn English in your sleep by devoting 5 minutes a day to it for a month. It doesn't work. Approach the learning process consciously and use sleep for its intended purpose.

It is known that schoolchildren and students put notes under their pillows on the eve of exams in order to better understand the material. And this is not superstition at all. Israeli neurophysiologists have found that our brain is capable of remembering new information, not only while awake, but also during sleep - for example, establishing associations between certain smells and sounds.

A team of researchers led by Anat Arzi from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot conducted a series of experiments with a team of 28 volunteers who were good sleepers. When the subjects fell asleep, they played one of several sound signals, after which sticks with samples of certain odors were brought to their noses. Among the smells there were both pleasant ones - say, the aroma of shampoo or deodorant, and unpleasant ones - the extract of rotten fish and rotten meat.

Scientists monitored the brain function of their subjects using an encephalograph. In those cases where the stimuli woke up people, they were “disqualified”—removed from the team, since the purity of the experiment was no longer in question.

It turned out that when exposed to stimuli, characteristic lines appeared on the monitors, indicating that the brain was processing the information received. In addition, if the subjects perceived unpleasant odors, their breathing depth decreased, and if they smelled pleasant ones, they began to “sniff.”

The next day, the researchers only “played” the sounds that had previously preceded the odors to the volunteers. The reaction was the same as in the case of odors: the brain remembered what was preceded by this or that sound signal, just as Pavlov’s notorious dogs associated the start of feeding with the lighting of a light bulb.

According to Arzi and her colleagues, such memorization is only possible during the so-called slow-wave sleep phase. If the experiments were conducted while people were in REM sleep, they did not make any associations between sounds and smells. According to scientists, this is due to the so-called “sleep amnesia”: we lose memory of the dreams that visit us during this period. We can remember what we dreamed during REM sleep if we are suddenly awakened at that moment.

“Now that we understand that learning and assimilation of new information during sleep is possible, we want to understand how far the limits of this ability extend, namely, what can be remembered during sleep and what cannot,” says Arzi.

By the way, at one time a method of teaching foreign languages ​​while sleeping was practiced - people were simply played a recording with the teacher’s voice. It was believed that learning is effective due to the work of our subconscious. However, most experts were very skeptical about the know-how.

Obviously, information can be remembered during sleep, but this requires more than just putting a textbook under your pillow and falling asleep on it. It’s just that if we read some material before the exam, then it fits into our heads better overnight...

Surely all people would like to spend less time studying and transfer this labor-intensive process to sleep time. But is it possible to gain new knowledge in a dream without spending time and energy, or is this just a scientific legend? How to study in your sleep? These questions have concerned scientists for centuries.

The process of sleep learning is called hypnopaedia. Translated from Greek, “hypnos” means “sleep” and “paideia” means “learning”. This method of assimilation of new information was used in ancient India, when Buddhist monks whispered the texts of ancient manuscripts to sleeping students. In Ethiopia, detectives were described in detail in this way the appearance of criminals. State-approved hypnopedia sessions first started in the United States, where officers at a naval base were fitted with headphones at night and read a telegraph code.

The secret power of the subconscious

The human brain is fraught with many secrets beyond the reach of science. Its main function is to remember, save and reproduce any information.

The words that we pronounce and the thoughts that arise in our head affect our subconscious, which is capable of absorbing all information from the outside world. We could forget what we saw, but the subconscious will store these images in the depths of the mind for a long time.

During sleep, only the muscles relax, but the brain never rests. It always functions, controlling vital processes. Thus, the absolute peace of a person in a dream is just an illusion that hides a person’s reaction to environmental factors. At night, the human brain works in a calmer mode and reproduces dreams - images of what worries, frightens a person or causes any strong emotional reaction.

Sleep puts people into a very receptive state. The consciousness sleeps, but the subconscious awakens. And it is quite possible to make the subconscious work for us. This phenomenon was known to ancient Greek teachers. Unintelligent students were sent to sleep, reading to them during sleep the educational material that had not been learned during classes. It was possible to learn little in a few minutes, but in a couple of hours the students managed to catch up on the lost material.

Similar cases became known at different times on different continents. This fact was associated precisely with the secret power of the subconscious - the abilities provided to each person by nature itself.

Nocturnal brain activity and alpha rhythm

Scientists identify three main stages of brain activity during a person’s rest:

• stage of falling asleep;
• “REM sleep,” characterized by the gradual extinction of all reactions, during which a person dreams;
• “delta sleep” is a stage of deep sleep, characterized by the human brain remaining at rest and digesting information received during the day.

Memorizing data is possible only in a state of drowsiness; after a person is immersed in the stage of deep sleep, the perception of information stops. That’s why there is learning in a dream in 5 minutes, because “sleepy” assimilation of material, in principle, cannot be a long process.

Alpha rhythm (superficial sleep stage) is neural intelligence, the natural and most effective way of working of the human brain. It is responsible for the connection between the right and left hemispheres, the symbiosis of consciousness and subconsciousness, creativity, immunity, the hormonal system, and psycho-emotional balance. Alpha waves arise during calm, relaxed wakefulness, when a person closes his eyes and plunges into a state of complete relaxation without extraneous thoughts in his head. In such a situation, everything becomes possible.

Science has confirmed that people with a clearly defined alpha rhythm have developed abstract thinking. Enhanced alpha rhythms in a trance state lead to relaxation, improve sensitivity and expand consciousness.

The brilliant scientist A. Einstein was invariably in a similar state. Stimulating the brain during light sleep is ideal for reinforcing the material to be studied.

Hypnopedia sessions

The list of sciences that are studied in dreams is wide and varied. The digestibility of the material depends on the individual abilities of the person. If a subject comes easily to you during the day, there is no need to study it in your sleep. Hypnopedia is most often used in those areas of knowledge that are difficult to study and require rapid assimilation. Foreign languages, IT technologies, basic knowledge of playing musical instruments, memorization of information are the most popular areas for the use of hypnopedia.

Sleep teaching, like hypnosis, is self-hypnosis. However, learning while falling asleep has a weaker effect on the human brain. New information that the learner hears in a dream causes reactions at the level of reflexes. In order for fresh data to be remembered better, the brain requires a complete absence of external distracting impulses. A person’s emotional background should also be consistently calm. In such an atmosphere, the brain is able to concentrate as much as possible on the information received in a dream.

The effectiveness of night audio training increases when:

• the student is interested in the information he hears and subconsciously wants to remember it;
• the information does not cause irritation;
• the student is in a state of complete rest;
• the human muscles are relaxed and do not send distracting signals to the brain;
• extraneous sounds and other environmental influences are kept to a minimum.

An extremely important factor in the effectiveness of training is a person’s belief that hypnopedia will bring the desired results. For quality practice, you must master the technique of absolute relaxation. By tensing one limb to the point of trembling, and then sharply relaxing it, you will learn to recognize the moment of greatest muscle relaxation. The same must be done with the rest of the body. Once you have mastered this practice, you can safely start practicing.

Before the “training sleep” you need to lie down on a comfortable, but not sagging sofa, face up. The limbs may be bent, but always relaxed. Close your eyes and fall asleep. After 30 minutes, an audio recording with information to study will automatically start. If the training is conducted by a teacher, he will repeat the material several times in a quiet voice.

Studying in a dream: pros and cons

Despite long-term studies, the effectiveness of hypnopaedia remains controversial. Memorization usually occurs while half asleep, rather than during full sleep. In 2000, scientist and practitioner A. Potapov spoke about his study of English using this method for six months. The researcher noted the relief of reading texts, but throughout the experiment he had colorful nightmares. Scientists fear that passion for this form of education can harm a person’s mental health.

However, the stunning results of some students cannot be ignored either. Thus, first-year students of the engineering faculty of one of the universities, who used hypnopedia to study foreign languages ​​along with the traditional form of education, knew twice as many words and expressions as ordinary students.

The research of many scientists contradicts each other. We can conclude that memorizing data in a dream is an auxiliary tool for intellectual development, but not its basis. For “sleep education” to bear fruit, long-term training is necessary, and new material must be repeated to the sleeper several times.

Numerous experiments have shown that in sleep, knowledge that has already been acquired is better consolidated, but not completely new.

It is impossible to learn Chinese only during sleep or to become professionally versed in technology without receiving this knowledge during the day in a familiar form. Sleep actually promotes learning, helps train your memory and improves retention. However, the hope that a person will be able to receive a full-fledged education while sleeping will not come true in the near future.

Since ancient times, a variety of properties have been attributed to sleep: from the completely ordinary function of rest to magical ones and even a description of the fact that during sleep the soul leaves the body. But one of the most common modern beliefs is perhaps that enormous amounts of information can be learned in dreams. And now, as the journal Nature Communications writes, a group of French scientists managed to obtain proof of the veracity of this theory.

Physiologists distinguish two phases of sleep: REM sleep and slow sleep. Almost immediately after falling asleep, the slow-wave sleep phase begins, during which the body gradually “switches off” and regains strength. Then comes the REM sleep phase, when the brain is activated, and the muscular system, on the contrary, becomes inactive. At this moment, chaotic eye movements and active brain activity occur.

Many neuroscientists believe that perceiving signals from the outside world will interfere with memory consolidation, so the brain will actively suppress them, making “internal” memories (i.e. dreams) more vivid and ignoring information from external sources.

A group of scientists from France decided to test whether the brain perceives information during sleep. As part of the experiment, several volunteers spent the night in the laboratory. Participants in the experiment were shown a special audio recording during sleep, which was white noise with a “hidden” sequence of sounds. had to remember these sounds and name them after waking up. While awake, almost any person can cope with this task, but most require several listening to sounds to successfully solve it.

The researchers decided to test whether a person could recognize this combination of sounds faster if it was played in a dream. The volunteers were divided into several groups and connected to electroencephalographs.

As a result, people who listened to these sounds during slow-wave sleep identified the sequence of sounds several times faster than those who did not listen to anything in their sleep. But playing audio recordings during REM sleep worsened the memory process. Such results indicate that a person does not completely “disconnect” from the outside world during sleep and continues to perceive and remember information. According to one of the study's authors, Thomas Andrillon from Pierre and Marie Curie University,

“The question of whether a sleeping person can remember new information has been exciting the minds of scientists for several decades. We were able to show that unconscious, hidden memories can still be formed during sleep, but only during REM sleep and the transition period between REM and slow-wave sleep. Similar stimulation in the slow-wave sleep phase, on the contrary, leads to the opposite effects.”

Based on materials from RIA Novosti

Over the past half century, humanity has learned about the same amount about sleep as over the previous thousand years of its existence. Only in recent decades have scientists made most of the discoveries about this phenomenon. The main one was that at night the brain does not rest, but actively works, restoring physical resources, controlling the release of biologically active substances, and ensuring memory consolidation.

During the period of intensive study of sleep, most of the myths associated with it were debunked. At least now, no sane person would argue that in a dream the soul leaves the body or that dreams can be of a mystical nature. However, it is scientific advances that have led to new misconceptions about sleep...

The connection between sleep and memory was first established back in the 60s. Based on this, scientists have suggested that during sleep the human brain may be receptive to learning, and that new material read to the sleeping person can be remembered and reproduced by him while awake. Researchers dreamed of a future without schools and universities, in which everyone could go to bed turning on a tape recording of a textbook, and wake up in the morning with their heads enriched with fresh knowledge. Studying in a dream - what scope for imagination opens up! How much time could be spent on more interesting and useful things than cramming!

The scientists were supported by historians. They said that in ancient India, Buddhist monks practiced reading complex manuscripts to their students while they slept. Sleepy learning has begun to be intensively researched...

In our country, sleep learning was independently studied by A.M. Svyadosh, A.M.Vein, L.A. Bliznichenko and others. After some time, the results of their observations began to contradict each other. Some scientists found that memory in a dream is most receptive after falling asleep and before waking up, others noted that subjects were able to remember information only during REM sleep, and still others concluded that learning is possible only in the slow stages. Thus, when asked whether it is possible to learn in a dream, scientists answered positively, but as far as specific information is concerned, the conclusions were very different.

In the end, all researchers were forced to conclude that learning in a dream is possible only if learning occurs simultaneously in the waking state. In other words, “sleepy” memorization is only an auxiliary element of intellectual growth, but not its basis. It also became obvious that learning in a dream in 5 minutes is categorically impossible: for the “educational process” to bear fruit, a decent amount of time must pass, and the information must be repeated to the sleeper many times.

Remember the Soviet comedy "Big Change"? Leonov's hero, intending to practice the “new technique,” ​​asked his daughter to read a history textbook to him while he slept. Instead of teaching a lesson in sleep training, she turned on the radio. The next day he was called to answer. His monologue looked something like this: “At the beginning of the 19th century, Germany was an agricultural country. Sir Jones, your card is broken... Comrade Major, the intruder has escaped... The water temperature in the Baltics is plus eight”... An interesting example. Although if all this actually happened, after the first sentence, which he heard while still awake, the person would most likely fall into a stupor and not know what to say next. Alas, memorization in a dream is very imperfect...

The real relationship between memory and sleep can be described in the following points.

By the way, with prolonged lack of sleep, even those memories that seem impossible to forget can suffer. For example, if a person spends several days without sleep, he may forget his name, how old he is, and who he even is. So, in a sense, learning is always happening in sleep—memory retaining old memories and forming new ones.

• The better the quality of sleep, the better the ability to learn. In people whose sleep is of sufficient duration and who sleep according to a constant schedule, the assimilation of material occurs much better.

Recently, this was once again confirmed by researchers from Brown University (USA), who asked participants with good and poor sleep to perform certain manipulations with their dominant and non-dominant hands. This led the leader of the experiment, Dr. Masako Tamaki, to rightly conclude: “Sleep is not a waste of time.” Subjects who got enough sleep had significantly higher test scores than those who didn't get enough sleep. That is, it is really possible to study in your sleep!

• To a very small extent, the brain is capable of active memory during sleep., since the sleeper (especially in the superficial stages of sleep at the border of cycles) is partially capable of receiving signals from the environment, and the brain is able to process information without the participation of consciousness.

Foreign scientists conducted an experiment. Sources of odors, both pleasant and unpleasant, were brought to the nose of sleeping participants. People reacted to this accordingly: in the first case they “sniffed”, in the second they held their breath. This was repeated for several nights in a row, and during exposure to one or another odor, a sound signal was given, one for each odor. Subsequently, the participants were exposed to only the sound signal, and at the same time they showed the same reaction as when inhaling the odor. In general, this was a demonstration not so much of learning as of the body’s ability to develop conditioned reflexes during sleep. But experience proves that at this time a person is receptive, therefore, hypothetically, he can learn in his sleep.

• With the help of certain interventions, it is possible to improve active memorization during sleep.

By
German somnologists were able to confirm this. During the day, new material was read to the subjects, while at the same time the room was scented with a certain smell. At night, half of the participants were simply repeated this material, and the other half of those sleeping, in parallel with reading, were exposed to the same smell that they felt during the daytime “lesson”. The latter remembered everything much better. There is an assumption that this can be explained by activation of the hippocampus. It not only reacts to smells, but is also responsible for memory... So we can say that the anatomical formation responsible for the ability to learn in a dream has been found - this is the hippocampus!

All this brings us to the obvious conclusion. In a dream, mainly the memorization of old knowledge occurs, and not the assimilation of new knowledge. So if a sleeping person is read, whispered, and even hummed into his ear by information that is completely unfamiliar to him, then when he wakes up, he will not begin to speak Chinese, become a professional in assembling motorcycles, or quote Horace in the original.

Is it possible to learn in your sleep? Without a doubt. You could even say that sleep is one of the main reasons why we are able to learn at all. It does not improve, it forms memory and improves memorization in a dream! However, transferring learning only to the period of sleep is a task with the same prospects as putting a book under the pillow in the expectation that during the night all knowledge will transfer from it to the head of the sleeper. So continue to study as you have always done - in the waking state. But don't forget to get enough sleep every night - this will make your learning progress much more noticeable.