Ecology of life. Many of us have heard that during sleep a person can be taught. We spend a third of our lives sleeping and it would be great to learn how to use this time for learning, but it's not that simple. Let's dig into the latest findings from this area.
Many of us have heard that during sleep a person can be taught. We spend a third of our lives sleeping and it would be great to learn how to use this time for learning, but it's not that simple. Let's dig into the latest findings from this area.
Perhaps the most common course for sleep is studying foreign languages. Look how great it is to master a new language in a week with almost no effort, but for some reason the total transition to new format no learning occurs.
The question arises - is it really possible to learn while sleeping?
In the USA pcs. Connecticut has a Sleep Disorders Research Center. Scientists say that these kinds of advertising claims are nothing more than deception. During sleep, our brain works in a slightly different mode. At this time, it separates and classifies the information received. And he also determines what to put in long-term memory and what can be forgotten. Therefore, scientists advise learning something while you are awake and your brain is tuned to perceive information.
Israeli scientists also made an interesting discovery. They showed that some areas of the brain work in the same way during sleep as during wakefulness. This is why we remember our dreams and can sometimes reproduce them to the smallest detail. However, as for new information, being in a state of sleep, the human brain blocks all ways of receiving and assimilating it.
There are three main stages of brain activity during sleep. Falling asleep stage- at this moment, brain activity begins to fade. Stage REM sleep - the eyes begin to move quickly, at this moment the person sees dreams.
Then comes stage deep sleep
- brain cells at this stage work in a very interesting way and resemble a wave of football fans at the stadium. For a split second, the cells return to activity, and then return to a state of rest. It is at this stage that the brain digests and categorizes new information. If at this stage the sleep is interrupted, say with an audio recording, the person will wake up, because... the brain will go into activity mode and wake the person up.
But it is not all that bad. Newborns sleep 18 hours a day and still manage to develop. Moreover, the rate of this development exceeds the rate of development of an adult! Other scientists from the USA have already decided that it is in dreams that adaptation to the modern world takes place.
American scientists conducted an interesting experiment. They played a quiet sound and then blew gently on the sleeping baby. Of the 26 children, 24 associated the sound with the wind and after 20 minutes they began to close their eyelids more tightly, waiting for it. Despite the fact that the children were sleeping, learning took place right in their sleep.
It turns out interesting thing. On the one hand, we cannot learn in our sleep, on the other hand, yes. It is a pity that the last experiment was carried out on infants. Perhaps an adult would have behaved differently. Are there any pioneers who want to repeat the wind experiment on their relatives? published
Osipyan Kristina, 9a grade
This work is devoted to the study of the human state in a dream, the author of the work tries to answer the problematic question - is it possible to remember information in a dream?
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Introduction…………………………………………………………… page 2
II. Theoretical part
How does a person remember……………………………. p.4
Development of memory in sleep……………………………….. page 6
Sleep phases……..………………………………………… page 7
III. Practical part
Questionnaire results……………………………………………………… page 9
Carrying out the experiment……………………………………. page 10
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …. page 11
Literature…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12
Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...p. 13
I. INTRODUCTION
Every day we spend about eight hours, or a third of your entire life, sleeping. This is an immutable law of our life. It applies to both animals and flora. Sleep is a divine law, and very often we find answers to problems that concern us precisely while we sleep. Many have defended the theory that during the day we accumulate fatigue and we need to go to sleep in order for the body to rest, and that during sleep the process of restoration of strength occurs. This is wrong. Nothing rests during sleep. While we sleep, our heart, lungs and all the vital organs of the body continue to function. If you eat before going to bed, it means your stomach is working, food is being digested and absorbed. The skin glands produce sweat, and your nails and hair continue to grow. Our subconscious never rests or sleeps. It is always active and controls everything vitality. The process of recovery and wound healing occurs much faster during sleep, since there is no interference from the conscious mind. In a dream, you receive wonderful answers to all the questions that concern you.
Dr. John Biglow, a renowned authority on sleep research, has shown that while you sleep at night, you receive many impressions indicating that the nerves in your eyes, ears, nose, and sense of touch are active, and that your entire brain remains active. The scientist argued that main reason sleep is the need for “the nobler part of the soul to unite with the abstractness of our higher essence and join in the wisdom and foresight of the gods.”
Dr. Biglow further states: “The results of my research have not only strengthened my conviction that supposed rest from the day's work and worries is not the main purpose of sleep, but have also made clearer my conviction that neither aspect human life does not deserve such attention to her symmetrical and impeccable spiritual development than the period of time when a person sleeps.” And so, the human body continues to work during sleep and processes the information accumulated during the day.
Every day a lot of things happen to a person important information, which you need to remember. What's the best way to remember it? Is it possible to remember information while sleeping? This question interested me, and I decided to conduct research: Is it possible to remember in a dream?
The purpose of my work:
To investigate whether a person is able to remember information during sleep.
I set myself the following tasks :
Study scientific literature on this topic;
Explore various ways remembering information
Conduct an experiment on memory in a dream
Explore whether sleep can be a way to remember information.
Hypothesis : Information can be remembered during sleep by listening to the information repeatedly during the stages of REM sleep.
In my work I used methods : sociological survey, experiment, analysis.
II. Theoretical part.
II.1. How does a person remember?
If someone wants to refresh his memory of the places he visited during his last vacation trip, he can collect the necessary information by looking at photographs that he took himself. Each photograph contains complete and specific information about a particular moment. However, this is not enough good way to understand how memory works. The process of memorization does not boil down to looking at an album with objects to remember, as if we were talking about photographs. Rather, it is an active and guided process in which the most important data is selected and stored in coded form.
During memorization, 3 are carried out various operations: obtaining information, storing it and restoring it. In reality, memorization requires the implementation of all 3 actions, which ensure the activity of various areas of the brain. It can be seen that memory problems in most cases are due to difficulties that arise in the recovery phase and are the result of faulty codification. In these cases, the cause of memory disorders lies in poor perception or incorrect storage of information.
It is obvious that information recovery is a more complex process than its perception. In reality, every day a person receives a large amount of varied information, and yet a fairly limited amount of data is retained in memory. No matter how useful the information may seem, only part of it will actually be needed. This is the principle of motivation for selecting data that will be in our memory storage. By well understanding the mechanism of functioning of the processes involved in memory, a person can improve its performance and get a more complete picture of its capabilities. There are many methods for remembering information. There is a whole direction in science called mnemonics.
Mnemonics - This is a set of methods and rules that serve to improve memory performance, the main principles of which are the organization of information, the use of an associative approach and the creation of mental images.
When information makes sense, it is remembered easily. On the other hand, sometimes you need to remember information such as driving direction, date or phone number. Mnemonics are used to remember this particular type of data, as well as to enhance the overall ability to retain information.
The most basic forms of mnemonics are rhythm and rhyme . Rhythm is a natural principle for organizing information; many people involuntarily apply it. They repeat data over and over again, adhering to the same rhythm or simultaneously selecting rhymes to them. Undoubtedly, this is how you learn the multiplication table or the names of the rivers of your country. In a most amazing way, rhythm and rhyme for memory were used in the oral cultural traditions of countries that did not have writing at that time, for example in the Homeric epic. However, you need to pay attention to the fact that memorization using rhythm and rhyme does not guarantee understanding of information, only its memorization is ensured.
Another simple form of mnemonics is to use acronyms, the principle of which is to create a word from the initial elements that need to be remembered. For example, to better remember the names of 3 Greek architectural styles: Ionic, Doric and Corinthian, you can form the acronym IODOKO. Ultimately, memory techniques give meaning to information that previously did not have it, thereby facilitating the process of remembering.
II.2. Development of memory in sleep.
Before the publication of the book by Luria A.R. "A Little Book about Big Memory" all the techniques for strengthening memory were called "mnemonics". Luria was the first to introduce a division into mnemonics (methods based on verbal-logical thinking) and eidotehnika (from the word “eidos”, from Greek - image; methods based on concrete figurative thinking). In his book he gives an example of phenomenal eidetic memory.
Numerous experiments have shown that human memory reserves are associated with the development of eidetic memory. Many foreign schools teach how to memorize correctly. The experience of many of our domestic scientists convinces us that we already know how to remember; we need to learn not to memorize, but to reproduce.
By developing imagination and making the brain more flexible, students need to be taught to easily recall and reproduce information. The emphasis should be placed not on the ability to memorize, but on the ability to reproduce. Many books teach you to memorize. How to learn to reproduce? We need to look at how gifted people do this, how super-memory occurs in hypnosis (hypermnesia), how this phenomenon manifests itself during stress (there are known cases of super-memory during war). And in hypnosis, a person can remember long-forgotten names, events, books read. In the same way, during hypnosis, missing keys, hidden jewelry were found, and signs of criminals were remembered. And the state of hypnosis can be compared to the state of REM sleep. What are the phases of sleep and what is REM sleep?
II.3. Sleep phases.
The results of studies by N. Kleitman and Yu. Azerinsky showed that during sleep the brain is not inactive, but demonstrates different kinds activity. Moreover, brain activity during sleep is not chaotic, but has a pronounced cyclical nature. For 8 hours of sleep (the duration recommended for proper rest of an adult’s body), an average of 5 cycles lasting 90-100 minutes are observed, and within each cycle there are two sleep phases - the slow-wave sleep phase and the REM sleep phase.
NREM sleep phase.Slow-wave sleep accounts for about 75% of a person’s total nighttime rest. During the slow-wave sleep phase, breathing rates decrease, heart rate decreases, muscles relax, and eye movements slow down. However, the slow-wave sleep phase is not a homogeneous process. Within it, four stages are distinguished, each of which is characterized by different bioelectric characteristics and indicators of sleep depth or awakening thresholds. As slow-wave sleep deepens, a person’s activity gradually decreases, and it becomes increasingly difficult to wake him up. At the same time, in the deep stages of the slow-wave sleep phase, the heartbeat and respiratory rate, which compensate for the decrease in breathing depth and decrease blood pressure. From a physiological point of view, it is in the slow-wave sleep phase that rehabilitation and healing of the body occurs - cells and tissue structure are restored, minor repairs occur internal organs person, the energy balance is restored.The first stage of slow-wave sleep is called napping. While dozing, it is common for a person to “think through” and “relive” those ideas that were especially relevant to him throughout the day. The brain intuitively continues to search for answers to questions that have not been resolved, half-asleep dreams appear, and sometimes a person sees dream-like images in which a successful solution to his problem is realized. The electroencephalogram at the first stage of slow-wave sleep shows a significant decrease, almost to minimum indicators, alpha rhythm, which is the main characteristic of a person’s waking state. Drowsiness is replaced by sleep of slow depth. This stage is characterized by an increased alpha rhythm or sleep spindle rhythm. Blackouts begin to alternate with thresholds of high auditory sensitivity. About 2-5 times a minute a person is in a state where it is very easy to wake him up. At the third stage of slow-wave sleep, “sleep spindles” become much larger, then delta oscillations are added to the increasing frequency of slow-wave sleep. As the amplitude increases, the rhythm of oscillations slows down, and the fourth stage begins, which is usually called deep sleep (delta sleep) of the slow-wave sleep phase. In the delta stage of sleep, a person begins to dream, sensory activity is dulled, and it becomes quite difficult to wake up the sleeper. To recover physically, a person needs about 3-4 hours of slow sleep. About an hour and a half after falling asleep, immediately after the fourth stage of the slow-wave sleep phase, the REM sleep phase begins.
REM sleep phase (fast wave or paradoxical sleep).REM sleep, also known as rapid-wave sleep or paradoxical sleep, is characterized by significant changes in the behavior of the sleeper. Observations allow us to conclude that the stage of REM sleep is characterized by increased activity of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. In this case, the heart rate, as well as breathing, is characterized by some arrhythmia. Muscle tone falls, the diaphragm of the mouth and neck muscles are completely immobilized, but at the same time the movements become active and pronounced eyeballs under closed eyelids. It is in this phase that a person dreams; moreover, if you wake up a sleeper in a “rapid sleep”, he will most likely remember clearly and be able to talk about what he dreamed.
The REM sleep phase becomes longer from cycle to cycle, but at the same time the depth of sleep decreases. Despite the fact that REM sleep in each subsequent cycle gets closer to the threshold of wakefulness, waking up a person in paradoxical sleep is much more difficult.
How do sleep phases alternate?If a person's night sleep duration is 8 hours, the duration of the phases varies from cycle to cycle. At the same time, in the first 90-100 minute cycle, slow-wave sleep predominates, and the REM sleep phase may be absent. In the next cycle, slow-wave sleep becomes slightly shorter and gives way to rapid sleep, which can last literally a few minutes. When moving to the third cycle, the proportion of REM sleep increases, and by the time sleep ends, REM sleep clearly prevails over slow sleep. Scientists claim that this is why a person who is not awakened by a stimulus, such as an alarm clock or a telephone call, always clearly remembers his dreams.
III. Experimental part.
III.1. Survey results.
Before starting the experiment, I conducted a survey of students in our class. The survey questions were as follows:
Do you think sleep is necessary for rest? What does the body rest during sleep?
Do you know what REM and NREM sleep are?
Do you think you can remember while you sleep?
Have you tried using this technique?
If you have tried it, when is information remembered better: during sleep or while awake?
According to the survey results (see appendices 1-5) of 28 respondents:
18 believe that sleep is necessary for rest, and that the body rests during sleep. 10 people believe that the body does not rest during sleep;
10 have an understanding of fast and slow sleep, 18 - do not know how slow sleep differs from fast sleep;
26 respondents believe that it is possible to remember information during sleep, two believe that it is impossible to remember during sleep;
5 respondents tried to use the method of memorizing in a dream in their practice, 23 did not use it.
Of the 5 respondents who used the method of memorizing in a dream, two believe that information is remembered during sleep, and the rest believe that information is better remembered while awake and cannot be remembered during sleep.
Based on the results of the survey, the following conclusions can be drawn:
1. Most of the respondents have no idea how slow-wave sleep differs from fast sleep,
2.Most respondents did not use the technique of memorizing in a dream,
3. For more effective use With this technique, you need to know when a person is better able to remember information - during REM or slow sleep.
III.2. Conducting an experiment
I conducted research on memory in sleep during both the slow-wave sleep stage and during REM sleep. During slow-wave sleep, I conducted an experiment with my younger brother when he was fast asleep. The stage of slow-wave sleep occurs after a person has fallen asleep. The experiment was as follows: I read aloud in a normal voice piece of art“The Drowned Woman,” which my brother was assigned for literature. At the same time, I did not tell my brother that I would conduct an experiment. I read an excerpt from the work twice. The next morning I asked my brother if he remembered what I read. He didn’t remember the information, what’s more, he didn’t even hear it, and he doesn’t know what I read about.
During the REM stage of sleep (the morning hours before waking up), an experiment was conducted with me. My mother helped me in carrying out the experiment. Early in the morning, while I was still sleeping, she turned on a tape recording with the head of “Bella” - M.Yu. Lermontov, (story “Hero of Our Time”). Then, when I woke up, my mother asked me the contents of the chapter. Of course, there were small errors, but the result was still there.
Luckily for me, the next day, when we came to class, one of my classmates unpurposefully plunged into the stage of REM sleep (drowsiness), at this time they explained to us new material. After the lesson, I approached my classmate and asked if he remembered anything? The answer was yes. After that, I asked him a few questions. There were also some errors, but the material was learned.
We can conclude that in order to perform any task in reality or in a dream, it is necessary to configure the body, as if giving it an indication of what needs to be done. Thus, information is remembered better during the REM stage of sleep.
IV. Conclusion.
Before conducting the study, I hypothesized that information could be remembered during sleep by repeatedly listening to information during the stages of REM sleep. As a result of the experiment, this hypothesis was partially confirmed.
During the experiment, it turned out that this seemingly easy experiment contained unexpected difficulties. And the most important of them: how to learn to wake up while continuing to sleep and read the pages we need. It turned out that as soon as you start to dream, you immediately wake up because you are “peering” too closely into the dream. After all, you begin to analyze the text and ask yourself questions. Or you try too hard to change or continue your sleep. In any case, an effort of will spoils everything. So, we found out what not to do. What do you need? There is one little secret in dream management. This secret is napping. This is the state of our brain that occurs at the moment of falling asleep or waking up. You don’t seem to be sleeping yet, but you’re no longer awake. Thoughts flow sluggishly and get confused. You gradually fall asleep. And in this corridor between reality and darkness, you need to linger, stay in it longer. How to do it? How not to immediately find yourself in the grip of sleep? The first thing is to pretend that you forgot something in this corridor and are about to find it. These somethings could be Your wish see your favorite cartoon or imagine a wish come true that you couldn’t fulfill during the day. Mentally clinging to what you want, you imperceptibly enter the realm of dreams and begin to see what you ordered before falling asleep. Exactly the same tactics should be used at the moment of awakening. However, it is obvious that there is a single phase of sleep during which it becomes possible to remember information. This is the so-called REM sleep or rapid eye movement phase, during which the conditions necessary for the assimilation of new information are present. As a result of the study, the following conclusions can be drawn:
Nessesary to use various methods memorization that is most optimal in specific conditions;
Not everyone is familiar with the technique of memorizing in a dream or has no idea about the features of its use;
This technique can be used taking into account the sleep phase;
Memorization of information occurs during REM sleep.
V. Literature
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D1%EE%ED
“Collection of abstracts on biology” 9th grade, publisher “EXMO” 2003
"Human Physiology" Educational literature for students of medical institutes G.I. Kositsky 1985
VI. Application
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 back 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 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 factors environment. 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. The foolish students were sent to sleep, reading to them while they slept educational material, which was not 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 in different time 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 is 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) - neural intelligence, natural and most effective way functioning 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 during falling asleep is weaker in its impact on human brain. New information, which the learner hears in a dream, causes reactions at the level of reflexes. In order for fresh data to be remembered better, the brain needs complete absence 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 influences external environment kept to a minimum.
Extremely important factor The effectiveness of training is a person’s belief that hypnopedia will bring 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 half asleep, and not during good sleep. In 2000, scientist and practitioner A. Potapov spoke about his study in English by using this method within six months. The researcher noted that it was easier to read texts, but throughout the experiment he saw colored nightmares. Scientists fear that passion for this form of education could cause damage mental health person.
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 already acquired is better consolidated, but not completely new.
It is impossible to learn only while sleeping Chinese or learn to professionally understand technology without receiving this knowledge during the day in in the usual 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.
Lucid dreams were described by Aristotle, the creator of logic and Metaphysics - and such duality accompanies this topic right up to our time. On the one hand, the state in which (in the words of Aristotle) “something in the consciousness of the sleeper tells him that he is in a dream” is demonstrated by experiments. On the other hand, many hopeless “spiritualists” are interested in it, so colleagues often look at scientists involved in lucid dreams with a grain of doubt.
The division of sleep into cyclically repeating phases - slow (lasting just over an hour) and fast (from 10-15 minutes to half an hour) - has been known since the 1950s. REM sleep is characterized by sudden bursts electrical activity brain and erratic eye movements under closed eyelids: it is believed that it is at this time that we dream. At the turn of the 1970s, successful experiments, the participants of which, according to electroencephalograph readings, remained in the REM sleep phase, but at the same time could consciously make a pre-agreed movement, for example with their eyes.
Due to the controversial reputation of lucid dreaming, such experiments only gained final recognition in the 1980s, after psychophysiologist Stephen LaBerge, then working at Stanford, improved the technique and actually established a channel of communication with dreamers, giving them tasks that they performed in their sleep while the experimenters Their brain activity and eye movements were monitored. Subsequently, Laberge became the founder of the Institute of Lucid Dreaming, where several devices were developed to stimulate this state.
Let's fall asleep
The first task of the future dreamer is to acquire healthy habits: normal duration and regularity of sleep in comfortable silence and darkness. You should keep a pen and notepad ready, writing down everything you can remember about what you dreamed. Subsequently, the collected “database” will make it possible to identify signs that often appear in a dream. A marker could be a meeting with a certain person or an object, a characteristic sensation or something else that should be monitored while awake.
"Am I dreaming?" - the future dreamer periodically thinks, trying to notice signs of the unreality of what is happening. The habit of fixing them will sooner or later work in a dream, and the person will become aware of it, having gained power over everything that happens inside the fantasy. Flying, performing with his favorite band, bending space into a tube - as we know from the movie hit “Inception”, which plays on the theme of lucid dreams, he can do anything.
Those wishing to master this technique can be directed to Laberge’s book, which has been translated into Russian and describes in detail all the stages. However, the mechanisms of this phenomenon remain poorly understood. The brain appears to find an unusual balance between the activity and inactivity of certain areas associated with consciousness and memory. For example, the anterior cortex, which is turned off in normal sleep, is excited: the person is kept in hypnagogia, on the border between wakefulness and unconsciousness. This state also occurs spontaneously when falling asleep, but the transition to lucid dreaming occurs in the REM sleep phase, when the brain is believed to be consolidating memory and consolidating new experiences.
In April 2018, the developers of the famous MIT Media Lab presented new system for lucid dreaming Dormio. An electroencephalograph and pressure sensors built into the glove record changes in brain activity and muscle relaxation in order to sound a sound signal at the right moment, allowing you to enter a controlled dream.
Let's remember
Involvement in lucid dreaming is useful, if only because it forms the habit of sleep in a healthy environment and normalizes the function of melatonin, which controls the circadian rhythms of activity. Some psychologists turn to lucid dreams, helping patients face the sources of neuroses and fears, overcome them and make waking life more peaceful. But their most interesting application is related to memory and learning.
By and large, their action differs little from the normal functioning of the brain with the perception of sensory signals and the formation of commands motor system. The memory of riding a bicycle, holding the handlebars and turning the pedals activates the same neurons in the motor cortex that are activated when actually riding a bicycle, except that their signal is not sent to the muscles. Memory can be called experiences fixed in the connections of neural networks, and repetition - the mother of learning - makes these connections fixed even more reliably.
A number of studies have shown that to improve a motor skill, you don’t even have to move—it’s enough to reproduce the movements mentally. During periods of REM sleep, signals from the motor cortex are blocked only reaching the brain stem, so that for the brain itself this is equivalent to action. Martin Dresler conducted tomography of the brains of people who, during a lucid dream, alternately mentally clenched one fist or the other, demonstrating the alternating activation of corresponding neurons in the motor cortex. All that's left to do is to enter the dream and start training.
Vladimir Dorokhov, somnologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Sleep and Wakefulness of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
« Scientific research lucid dreams, as well as their practical application, are complicated by the rarity of the phenomenon itself. Before you exercise in your sleep, you'll have to pay a lot of attention to it in your waking life, and yet this unstable form of REM sleep rarely lasts more than a few minutes. Well, in order to render a verdict on the effectiveness of lucid dreams in general case, more research is needed into how to enter and maintain these states.”
Let's study
The effectiveness of this practice was confirmed by the experiments of the German physiologist Daniel Erlacher: after just a single training in lucid dream people showed marked improvement in the accuracy of throwing coins into a glass. Specializing in sports medicine, Erlacher suggests using this state for additional training athletes - without unnecessary risk of injury or overdoing it on the eve of the competition. One can imagine other areas for training in lucid dreaming - for example, adaptation and preparation for actions under conditions of severe stress for people in relevant professions.
This approach is similar to learning with the help of virtual reality which is practiced in the training of pilots or surgeons. The brain itself, which remains the most powerful graphics station in the world, is doing the “calculating”, which gives the experience a sense of true authenticity. However, he is only able to use his existing experience. Lucid dream allows you to improve a simple motor skill or experience dangerous situation without the risk of disaster. But to gain new knowledge, for example, to learn Chinese or master differential equations, you will have to get out of bed and get down to business in the real world.
– VAndrey
If you really want to learn a new skill, you should go to bed immediately after class. Incredibly, if you sleep with music or light scented candle, then you can better remember what you learned during the day. Of course, sleeping to music is unlikely to replace a night of cramming, but it can still bring some benefits.
Although scientists still do not have a complete picture of the processes occurring in human body during "sleep learning", some are quite effective techniques This kind of sleep is already being used all over the world.
It is known, for example, that people can better remember the location of an object if, during sleep, they listen to the melody that they heard when they put the object in place. A similar technique can be used when studying foreign languages. You can fall asleep listening to an audio recording of the words you studied during the day.
It is expected that further research will improve the “study sleep” technique, which can improve memory and enhance learning, but it has already found a number of practical applications.
1. You can learn foreign words in your sleep
Scientists recently conducted research on a group of Germans learning Dutch from scratch. The group was divided into two parts. Participants in one of them were shown an audio recording of recently learned words while they were sleeping, without telling them about it. The other half slept in silence. Progress in learning new Dutch words was higher in the first half of the group.
To make sure that this technique is effective precisely due to the fact that the audio recording is listened to while sleeping, a third group of subjects was recruited - they listened to new words while walking. The results of the participants in the third group were inferior to the results of the participants in the first.
What is the secret of this phenomenon? The most convincing answer to this question is the following. Human sleep is divided into phases called REM and NREM sleep. During slow-wave sleep, the brain works hard to store our short-term memories into long-term memory.
In a group of Dutch language learners, brain activity studies were conducted using encephalography. The results of those students who listened to audio recordings of new words while sleeping showed greater slow wave activity.
Greater activity of slow waves, according to scientists, indicates more active processes of memorizing new words.
2. Sleeping with music helps you learn to play a musical instrument.
The described method is effective not only for memorizing new words. You can memorize melodies in the same way.
Researchers recently worked with a group of people learning to play the guitar using a technique borrowed from the video game Guitar Hero. After classes, the experiment participants were asked to sleep.
Participants were not warned that they were divided into two subgroups. The participants from the first subgroup, while they were sleeping, were played the same melody that they had rehearsed before. Participants from the second slept in silence. Participants from both subgroups were then asked to play the tunes they had learned in the last lesson. The results of participants from the first subgroup were significantly better than those from the second, despite the fact that they did not know that they were sleeping to music.
3. Listening to certain sounds during sleep improves memory
We forget great amount information, especially often dates and what seems unimportant to us. Our brains use a special labeling system to differentiate between important and unimportant information. Information marked “important” is immediately recorded in long-term memory. Memories without this mark are stored in short term memory and are quickly replaced with new ones.
What to do if the labeling system did not work and what is really important to you did not make it into long-term memory?
Scientists recently discovered that people who heard a sound while remembering even something that didn't seem important to them remembered that fact much better.
They studied a group of volunteers whose participants were asked to place icons in certain places on a computer screen. The computer was programmed to play a specific sound corresponding to each icon when it was placed. Thus, when placing an icon with a picture of a cat, a meow was reproduced, and when placing an icon with a picture of a bell, its ringing was played. After this, study participants were asked to take a nap. While they dozed, the scientists played sounds that corresponded to certain icons (as in previous studies, the volunteers were unaware that this was happening).
Interesting fact: people who listened to sounds, even just one of the sounds, were able to remember all the objects better. In other words, one sound evoked different memories.
The results of the described studies coincide with the results of previous studies in which scientists used smell instead of sound. Thus, a 2007 study showed that people who inhaled the scent of roses while studying remembered the material they studied better if they slept in a room filled with the same aroma.
