Sleep Learning?

[Smooth]

Hi,

I recently stumbled upon this sleep learning site (Sleep Learning - Learn While You Sleep!) and was wondering if anybody here has used it, not necessarily the cd's on the site but if anyone has actually learned anything by listening to something while they sleep and if it works??

By the way, nice meeting you all and thanks in advance.

[sadavis00]

i wish it were true

[Mitalp]

I'd sleep all day!

[Scott Bird]

I've never tried it, but it seems plausible. I often go to bed thinking of a problem and wake up with its solution.

As with many areas of sleep research though, the studies are vague at best. The only way to really find out is to give it a try. I'm very keen to hear how things go for you.

[elainevdw]

It's possible to improve skills through lucid dreaming. Stephen LaBerge did a decent amount of research on it. And if you've read the material at least once, I don't see why you couldn't study by accessing that material in your subconscious while lucid dreaming, either.

[Jim]

I wrote a blog post regarding sleep learning and the integration of lucid dreaming as a tool to achieve this.

Run Fat Boy .net » Blog Archive » Hypnopaedia and the missing link OR The Jim Jones Sleep Learning Theory

What I was trying to note in my post is that all of the research I have read about sleep learning had to do with the playback of trivial facts while in REM. The emphasis was on rote memorization and the ability of the subjects to regurgitate those facts when awake.

Given the appropriate state of consciousness (lucid dreaming), could we be successful in not just the retention of trivialalities, but maybe we can achieve logic deduction and reasoning?

This is what I was trying to accomplish in the experiment setup I outline above in my article.

[Smooth]

Jim,
Did it work for you?



I'm impressed with how fast this community replies

[Jim]

Originally Posted by Smooth

Did it work for you?

I stumbled with the construction of the device. I started looking at other (easier) alternatives for the detection of REM sleep inlcuding the onset of snoring and monitoring blood pressure, but nothing appears to be as accurate as the movement of eyes.

I need to further my electronics skills before I can carry forward.

[elainevdw]

I just listened to Erin's lucid dreaming podcast last night. She mentioned studying for a biology test in a lucid dream, and though she didn't go into detail, she seemed to think that it helped.

[Josh Wesalo]

Last year, I was memorizing some lines in a Shakespeare play. I tried recording them, and setting my computer to play them back about 2 hours into sleeping for the night, but it honestly didn't help. All it did, though, was wake me up every 90 minutes (at the lightest part of each sleep cycle, I guess). It may work—perhaps with shorter things to learn (like direct translations of words where the recording says a word, and then its translation, and repeats each one over and over again.)

[ditto]

I haven't ever heard of sleep learning, but I have heard of the one second nap

[jpletting]

At the end of my junior year in high school, my horrible, strict English teacher handed out a review for the final exam: 150 multiple choice questions on everything we'd studied. I procrastinated until it was too late, and the night before the exam, recorded every "example" question on the review and what I thought was the correct answer. I played this cassette in my auto-reversing Walkman overnight (in addition to having already "studied" the exam through the act of recording it) and woke up... a little late. I just missed the bell to my English class and was told I'd have to come back at the end of the day, which happened to be the last day of school--friends leaving, hugs, goodbyes, etc. So pissed was I by the end of the day that I flew through those 150 questions in half an hour. My hand had a mind of its own and ticked off Scantron dots before I could finish reading the questions. I have no doubt that subconsciously I was recognizing the correct answer out of the group from having pressed it into my brain the night prior.

Though in this instance it was pretty much a desperate CYA situation rather than a deliberate test, my experience with it causes me to lean toward an acceptance of sleep learning as a viable, reliable method of ingraining information into your subconscious. What I didn't get to experience is how to access that information in a conscious manner. Recognizing memorized multiple choice answers isn't the same as trying to learn philosophy or mathematics if one has never encountered the material before. I'd like to try it again sometime just to see what else I can do.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by ditto

I haven't ever heard of sleep learning, but I have heard of the one second nap

Very interesting. Have you tried this?

[Dimitry]

I actually believe that I encountered something like this thought I can't honestly say when and where, just that the feeling described in that post is VERY familiar to me.

What I find with techniques such as these though, is that sometimes forcefully trying to implement them might turn out what seems to be a "failure". It's like trying to force something and it not happening. It has to occur naturally. Maybe my limiting belief but I think there's some merit to it . I'll definately give it a shot though.

[timmymayes]

The photoreading system takes advantage of the fact that your subconscious mind sees all and remembers all by having you scan pages literally focused at the center and not on any single word, flipping a page every 2 seconds. Then you use "rapid reading" to sort of pull information out of the book, like zoning in on what you intended to learn from the book. It is most effective if you are reading with a purpose, such as to glean specific information. I've only begun to study the photoreading stuff but if it works It would not seem far off to be able to do the same quick scanning of a book then use lucid dreaming to pull the information from your subconscious. Not exactly learning with audio stuff at night but similar.

I just had an insight...I've also just begun reading "Think And Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. One of the key concepts in the book is Faith. Not faith such as you have in a religious context but ingraining faith into your subconsious through positive affirmations. Positive because any emotion you assosiate with those affirmations will increase its power in that direction. He said when discussing this topic that the repitition of that information will bring you to 100% belief in yourself and those affirmations. I know those sleep aides like quit smoking in your sleep or lose weight etc work by essentially reading these positive affirmations to your subconsious. The only problem is that while your subconscience can send information to your conscience at times, otherwise known as a hunch, intuition or gut feeling you cannot however pull the information consciously

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Timothy

[Scott H Young]

Sleep learning is largely scientifically bunk because the parts of the brain that transfer information from short-term to long-term memory are inactive during sleep. The only reason you remember anything from a dream/sleeping is when you wake up considerably fast enough so that your short term memory (which can hold about 7 +/- 2 items for as long as you focus on them) is still centered on the dream after you've woken up.

Lucid dreams may differ, but subconscious learning during sleep doesn't make sense. Research has shown that when you wake people up during Stage 1,2 or 3 sleep they are generally thinking fairly normally, however nobody remembers that they were even conscious during this period the next morning. Why? Because long-term memories weren't being encoded during this time.

There may be some technique that can bypass this, but I'd be very skeptical before investing heavily in such a product.

[Ati]

This is an interesting question. I've not tried the idea yet, but plan to start learning a new language in the hopefully near future and may try something close to this.

Seems that just what one's expectations are, what one does otherwise (!!!) abt learning something, and just how one tries to integrate any activity with sleep in an effort to see if sleeps helps the learning are are critical elements.

I'm very interested in anyone's experiences with this, what you tried, hbow you tried it and and what happened. I'd also be interested in any resources on others' experience.

I don't think we'd get much help from scientific literature just because of what Scott Bird and Scott H Young have said---

1) the literature is vague and often doesn't answer the question. Think of the what a large N (study population number) you'd need to have for an active study group --doing the "sleep learning"-- and an inactive group-- doing some placebo activity for comparison-- to be sure both groups have enough in common to make it a reasonable test on the study question itself.

2) Theoretical information is important -- e.g., "proxy outcomes" like information on where in the brain short term to long term memory is transferred, and what that part of the brain appears to be doing on EEG during sleep cycles. Even if this sort of information were to be encouraging (e.g., the memory transfer cortical components appear to be active during sleep), it wouldn't tell us the answer to the question "can this work in some way?", since that information doesn't look at the whole shebang. Often when one part of our physiology doesn't work in some conditions, other parts do work.

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

I've never tried it, but it seems plausible. I often go to bed thinking of a problem and wake up with its solution.

As with many areas of sleep research though, the studies are vague at best. The only way to really find out is to give it a try. I'm very keen to hear how things go for you.

Yah, me too !

I have seen a few reports on improved recall with sleeping directly after learning or studying something. There might be something to that.

And I can relate that I have also experienced an improved understanding of a problem or question after "sleeping on it", but not in relation to rote or other memorization.

Fascinating stuff, though...

Originally Posted by jpletting

At the end of my junior year in high school, my horrible, strict English teacher handed out a review for the final exam: 150 multiple choice questions on everything we'd studied. I procrastinated until it was too late, and the night before the exam, recorded every "example" question on the review and what I thought was the correct answer. I played this cassette in my auto-reversing Walkman overnight (in addition to having already "studied" the exam through the act of recording it) and woke up... a little late. I just missed the bell to my English class and was told I'd have to come back at the end of the day, which happened to be the last day of school--friends leaving, hugs, goodbyes, etc. So pissed was I by the end of the day that I flew through those 150 questions in half an hour. My hand had a mind of its own and ticked off Scantron dots before I could finish reading the questions. I have no doubt that subconsciously I was recognizing the correct answer out of the group from having pressed it into my brain the night prior.

Though in this instance it was pretty much a desperate CYA situation rather than a deliberate test, my experience with it causes me to lean toward an acceptance of sleep learning as a viable, reliable method of ingraining information into your subconscious. What I didn't get to experience is how to access that information in a conscious manner. Recognizing memorized multiple choice answers isn't the same as trying to learn philosophy or mathematics if one has never encountered the material before. I'd like to try it again sometime just to see what else I can do.

This is too funny, hope you passed the exam

I agree you probably "studied" for the exam making your recording. Also wondered if you already knew the material pretty well since you recorded what you "thought was the right answer" --if you already knew the right answers, why sleep at all except to stay awake the next day?

Originally Posted by Scott H Young

Sleep learning is largely scientifically bunk because the parts of the brain that transfer information from short-term to long-term memory are inactive during sleep. The only reason you remember anything from a dream/sleeping is when you wake up considerably fast enough so that your short term memory (which can hold about 7 +/- 2 items for as long as you focus on them) is still centered on the dream after you've woken up.

Lucid dreams may differ, but subconscious learning during sleep doesn't make sense. Research has shown that when you wake people up during Stage 1,2 or 3 sleep they are generally thinking fairly normally, however nobody remembers that they were even conscious during this period the next morning. Why? Because long-term memories weren't being encoded during this time.

There may be some technique that can bypass this, but I'd be very skeptical before investing heavily in such a product.

Have you seen reports of objective data linking altered brain wave patterns or sleep cycle shifts concurrent with lucid dreaming? I ask because I'm not clear about what level of consciousness lucid dreaming is, and how that has been objectively documented.

I have to say that there is a wide variety of recollection of being awakened during EEG documented stage 1, 2 or 3 sleep. This information comes from take offs (side studies) of sleep studies used clinically to evaluate restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea etc. People are very different as to whether or not they remember being awakened, or what they remember abt the awakened period of time.

Let's hear more on this, anyone interested!

Ati

[Donn]

Originally Posted by Smooth

Hi,

I recently stumbled upon this sleep learning site (Sleep Learning - Learn While You Sleep!) and was wondering if anybody here has used it, not necessarily the cd's on the site but if anyone has actually learned anything by listening to something while they sleep and if it works??

By the way, nice meeting you all and thanks in advance.

You will most certainly learn one thing; the cost.

[John Hill]

I'm not familiar with sleep learning but I wrote a related post on my blog called "do you believe in magic" it explains how you can ask yourself any question you really want to know the answer to just before going to sleep and your subconscious mind will reveal the answer after you wake up.

The link to the site is below.

John

[Sheehan]

I seriously doubt sleep learning would really work, but if it did, it might work as depicted on Huxley's Brave New World - you learn bits of information, but you cannot connect it to other useful, contextual information, rendering the process inadequate for serious learning.