Can You Learn While Sleeping To Achieve Your Goals Faster?

Can we learn while sleeping?

It's known that getting enough sleep is essential for recovery, learning, and making memories. Poor sleep can also be detrimental to health and sanity. For the longest time, learning while sleeping wasn’t possible.

But has science finally uncovered how to accomplish this phenomenal feat?

The short answer is yes, but it’s not what you may imagine.

It isn’t as simple as popping headphones in and waking up fluent in Italian. Researchers can now select specific memories and consolidate them while a person is sleeping. However, the precise mechanisms behind this were unknown until now.

Let’s break down what’s actually happening in the world of learning while sleeping.

The Data

The possibility that we can learn while sleeping has enthralled the personalities of specialists and researchers alike; the likelihood that one day we could improve our efficiency by learning while we rest is highly engaging. 

However, is it possible for such a scenario to ever occur? 

A new examination suggests so, and researchers are drawing nearer to understanding what happens in the brain when we rest and what the restful state means for learning and memory development. 

For example, past studies have shown that non-fast eye development (non-REM) or dreamless rest is critical for solidifying memories. 

Sleep spindles, or sudden spikes in oscillatory brain activity seen on an electroencephalogram (EEG) during the second stage of non-REM sleep, have also been shown to be essential for memory consolidation. 

Researchers targeted particular memories using auditory cues and reactivated or strengthened them specifically. 

However, up until this point, the mechanism behind such accomplishments remained a mystery. Researchers were still determining whether these mechanisms would aid in recalling new information and memories.

As a result, a group of researchers set out to find out. Scott Cairney, from the University of York in the United Kingdom, co-led the research with Bernhard Staresina, who works at the University of Birmingham, also in the U.K.

Their discoveries are published in Current Biology.

Sleep Spindles For Memory Consolidation

To quote Cairney:

"We are quite certain that memories are reactivated in the brain during sleep, but we don't know the neural processes that underpin this phenomenon," Cairney explains the motivation for the research. 

He continues, "Sleep spindles have been linked in previous research to the benefits of sleep for memory, so we wanted to investigate whether these brain waves mediate reactivation. We further reasoned that it might be possible to decipher memory signals at the time that these spindles took place if they support memory reactivation." 

Cairney and his colleagues asked 46 participants to "learn associations between words and pictures of objects or scenes before a nap" to test their hypotheses. 

After that, some participants fell asleep for ninety minutes, while others remained awake. 

Carney says of the people who rested, "A big part of the words were replayed during the rest to set off the reactivation of the recently scholarly picture recollections.”

He continues, "We presented them again with the words and asked them to recall the object and scene pictures"--when the participants awoke after a good night's sleep. 

According to Cairney's report, "We found that their memory was better for the pictures that were connected to the words that were presented in sleep, compared to those words that weren't." 

The researchers were also able to observe, using an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine, that the participants' brains triggered sleep spindles when they played the words associated with the memory. 

More specifically, the researchers could "tell" from the EEG sleep spindle patterns whether the participants were processing memories related to scenes or objects.

Leveraging the Science To the Real World

Knowing this information, how do you use it effectively?

Earlier, I mentioned learning Italian while sleeping. It's beneficial to put on headphones while you fall asleep. But, once you enter deep sleep, your conscious brain turns off, and you won’t be able to absorb the lessons, regardless of how badly you want to achieve your goals.

However, reviewing whatever you want to learn right before you sleep impacts the retention of information, and reviewing it again immediately upon waking solidifies the information into knowledge.

Sigmund Freud coined The Self-Organization Theory of Dreaming, which implies that:

“Dreams are not independently functional but rather a coproduct of the sleeping brain, reflecting the dreamer's physiological and psychological activities such as memory consolidation, emotion regulation, and reception of external stimuli.”

Freud showcases in his work how our physical and psychological activities influence our dreams during the day.

We can use sleep indirectly to maximize learning–not directly, though.

The deep sleep stage of our rest cycle is essential for recovery, and the REM state consolidates the information we’re learning into our memory stores, allowing us to absorb it into our unconscious mind.

Deep sleep happens earlier on in the night. Disrupting our deep sleep phase is detrimental to our health and will yield negative results for our learning phase during the day.

This method is suboptimal.

The optimal way to learn faster with sleep is as follows:

-Review the information before bed.
-Sleep deeply and soundly for at least 7 hours (ideally eight).
-Upon waking, immediately review the material from the night before.

According to science thus far, this process is the fastest way to learn.

The BMM Takeaway

Listen, we’re all about learning and progressing as much as possible, especially when achieving our goals.

However, too much can produce diminishing returns or impair other areas of our life.

Proper sleep should always be a priority.

Sleep is needed to repair muscles, bones, and tissues and promote immune system functioning. It’s critical for health, and nothing should sabotage it.

If you want to learn faster, utilize your waking hours more efficiently.

Live out of your calendar. Reduce doom scrolling and aimless phone time. Become disciplined about where you put your attention.

You can use the above formula to learn faster as long as it doesn’t screw up your sleep.