Is it possible to learn language while sleeping

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation , there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred… Whatever you can do or dream you can… Begin it now.

Here are some of the skills you may be able to sharpen in your sleep. In a recent experiment, scientists had native German speakers start learning Dutch, beginning with some basic vocab. Then they asked them to go to sleep. Unbeknownst to the dozing Germans, while they slept, the researchers played the sound of some of those basic words to one group of them.

The other group was exposed to no such sounds. Later on when they were tested on the words, the group that had listened to them overnight was better able to identify and translate them. To make sure the findings were tied to sleep - and not just the result of people hearing the words - they had another group listen to the words while they did something else while awake, like walking.

The walkers didn't recall the words nearly as well as the sleepers. In another study, researchers taught a group of people to play guitar melodies using a technique borrowed from the video game Guitar Hero. Afterward, all the volunteers got to nap. Once they were asleep, the researchers introduced new imaginary vocabulary words and their German "definitions.

According to the study's results, the participants were able to answer the test questions more accurately than they would as a result of chance, meaning that, per the researchers' conclusion, even during sleep, your brain can absorb a pretty decent amount of new information. In fact, another study, published in the neuroscience journal Cerebral Cortex , found that learning a language in your sleep could actually be more effective in terms of memory than learning while you're awake.

During the study, 60 German students were introduced to Dutch words they didn't know. Thirty participants were told to stay awake for four hours and listen to the words, and the other 30 were allowed to fall asleep listening. In , researchers from Northwestern University taught participants two simple songs, one of which was then played back to the test subjects during a period of deep, slow-wave sleep.

The test subjects consistently recalled the song they had heard while asleep more vividly than the other tune. In , similar results were obtained in a study into the recall of recently learned vocabulary.

Re-exposure to words during non-REM sleep improved memory of these words, and the researchers also recognized the same patterns of theta wave oscillations normally associated with successful memory encoding while awake.

Unless you want to record lists of vocabulary to play back to yourself every night, it sounds as if we should retreat to our waking hours to learn a language. Many people are familiar with the REM phase of sleep, which is when most dreaming occurs, but a lesser-known phase is slow-wave sleep, or SWS. Researchers have found SWS to be an important phase for memory processing. Jakke Tamminen , a psychology lecturer and researcher at Royal Holloway University of London, studies how sleep affects learning and the role memory consolidation plays in that process.

They were words from a fictional language with a hidden rule binding them together. The study found that participants in the experimental group were able to understand and apply the rule while sleeping and were better able to recall the words they learned than those who did not sleep.