Learn a foreign language while you sleep. Sounds too good to be true? Researchers at the University of Bern, Switzerland have shown that you can really learn new foreign words in your sleep.
It’s been demonstrated (with considerable supporting evidence) that you can use learning in your sleep to reinforce the information you learned during your waking hours. What if you could introduce new information during sleep, and access this information when you wake up?
There is now definite evident this is possible. In sleep experiments in Switzerland, researchers played foreign words and the corresponding translation words to subjects during a midday nap. The subjects were in a sleep phase called slow-wave sleep when the words were played.
Once the subjects awakened, they could access this newly formed word association. Moreover, the hippocampus, a brain structure essential for learning during wake time, also played a role during the sleep learning. The results have been published in the journal Current Biology (2018).
“Up-States”
The key appears to be playing the words during “up-states” while the subjects were in deep slow-wave sleep. During deep sleep, our brain cells alternate between an active state (“up-state”) and an inactive (“down-state”) about every half second. The researchers targeted the “up-states” to deliver the playback of the words to the sleeping subjects.
Better-Than-Chance Accuracy
In the experiments, an artificial word would be paired with a translation and played repeatedly (2, 3 or 4 times) during an Up-state. For example, the artificial word “tofer” would be paired with the meaning “key” and another artificial word “guga” would be paired with the meaning “elephant.”
When the subjects woke up, they would be asked, for example, “What fits in a shoebox, a tofer or a guga? The subjects were able to answer correctly at a better-than-chance accuracy. In other words, they remembered new information from sleep; they actually learned meaning of foreign words during sleep.
How Can You Apply This?
Obviously, most people don’t have equipment to measure their brainwaves during sleep. However, you can try this experiment. Get a friend to record a foreign word followed by the English meaning four times (assuming your native language is English). For example the word “bon” (meaning “good” in French) followed by “good” four times.
Repeat this with several more foreign words. Then play back the words (use an MP3 player on your smart phone or tablet) in a loop, and play it all night during your sleep.
When you wake up, get your friend to quiz you on the words. For example, “Does bon mean good or bad?”
If your success rate is better than just randomly guessing, then you just learned some foreign words in your sleep!
You can see the practical application this method may have in helping you learn a foreign language.
Science Converse Ice Breaker
Do you know you can learn foreign words in your sleep?
- Researchers at the University of Bern, Switzerland have shown proof that you can really learn new foreign words in your sleep
- They played a made-up word followed by its assigned definition several times to sleeping subjects
- For example, they repeated the word “guga” then followed by the meaning “elephant” four times
- When the subjects work up, they would be asked questions like “would a guga fit in a shoebox?”
- They subjects answered with better-than-chance accuracy, meaning they learned new information during sleep
Reference: Implicit Vocabulary Learning during Sleep Is Bound to Slow-Wave Peaks. Current Biology, Vol. 29, Issue 4 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2850
