Learning while you sleep and a case for more Zzzzzs

April 22, 2010 | ScientificAmerican.com

Sounds Make Memories Stick During Sleep

Hearing certain sounds during slumber can spur learning, according to research detailed at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in Montreal

By Ingrid Wickelgren

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MONTREAL—A good night’s sleep, or even just a nap, can be an aid to memory. Psychologists have known for years that sleep solidifies what we’ve learned during the day, transforming tenuous associations into stable ones. Learning while you snooze seems supremely efficient, and so people have long dreamed of co-opting this process so that their dozing brain shores up what matters to them—say, material they’ve studied for a test or a talk, or verbiage in a foreign language they want to master. But until now there has been little support for the notion that studying in your sleep is useful. Psychology graduate student John Rudoy at Northwestern University in Illinois reported findings here on Monday at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2010 annual meeting that hint at a way to do that.