Study While You Sleep

Measuring the Brain

With all of the topics that we have read in the course so far, there is one in particular that stands out to me as being incredibly interesting. That topic came in lesson two and it had to do with “measuring the mind”. For the longest time scientists thought that you could never study the brain, and that a person has to be dead in order for them to open them up and take a look inside. However, in 1924, Hans Berger changed that by introducing the electroencephalography and voila, the human brain came to life, even as the person was sitting there very much alive. Then there were the PET Scans, MRI’s and a multitude of other ways to take a look around a person’s mind. However, what happens when the person is not active, when they are asleep for example? Does the mind still process information or does it also take a siesta along with the rest of the body? The article that I found is called “To sleep, perchance to study: New research shows how brain learns while dozing”, and I found it particularly interesting because it answers that very question.

Every person in the world would like to go to bed, get a great night sleep and wake up in the morning having learned some new information. As a student I know I would. I would sure beat all of those late night study sessions with 2 hours of sleep. Scientists are now saying that it might actually be possible. This article states that while we are busy sleeping our brain does not sleep too, instead it stays up and is busy organizing and storing memories of events. “During sleep people are far from being totally shut down from the environment, the continue performing what they were doing before falling asleep and this can involve understanding the meaning of what is being said around them” is what Professor Sid Kouider said about the human brain and function. The experiment that was conducted included 18 volunteers which were outfitted with scalp sensors to detect brain waves. While they were awake the volunteers listened to a list that contained two categories of words: animals and objects. They were asked to push a button with their left hand for animal and right for object. The researchers monitored brain activity to determine which nerve cells were sparking during the activity. This was no surprise since the brain was awake and active for it to be responsive to the stimuli, however what happened next was amazing. The participants were taken into a dark room where the same experiment was conducted, only this time they were able to fall asleep should they choose. After the participants fell asleep, another list of animals and objects was read aloud to them, and the same parts of the brain that lit up before while they were awake and actively participating were the same ones that lit up now!

Professor Ken Pallar, a professor of psychology and the director of cognitive neuroscience program at Northwestern University said that these new findings show that people can indeed use their brains while sleeping. Pallar then proceeded to conduct an experiment of his own that involved music. He asked participants to learn a simple melody. Then the melody was played quietly for one half of the group while they slept and not for the other. It was no surprise that the group who heard the melody remembered it better than those who did not. However, all this great news and extra hours of sleep may come at a cost. According to Dr. Alon Avidan, a professor of neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center, the brain has too many tasks to do already when you are asleep. It has important functions that it needs to keep up with and if you try to overload it with other tasks while you sleep you may be doing more bad then good to yourself. If the brain does not do what it is designed to do during sleep, then sleep might not end up being that great and you might end up feeling more tired than you did before.

Like most good things in life, if they seem too good to be true, then they probably are. The amount of information that we have learned about the brain in the last six decades has been tremendous. Technology that was created such as the electroencephalograph, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and magnetic resonance imaging has given science a firsthand look at how the brain works. It has allowed researchers to be able to examine normal and impaired brain functions using noninvasive means. The images we have been able to see and monitor have saved countless number of lives and because of the techniques that we continue to develop in order to study the human brain we will be able to save countless more. Not only that, but we will be able to unlock the mysterious secrets our brain holds and continue to advance as a species, and that is pretty cool.

 

Reference:

Carroll, L. (2011). To sleep, perchance to study: New research shows how brain learns while dozing. Today Health. Retrieved from http://www.today.com/health/sleep-learning-new-research-shows-how-make-dozing-brain-work-1D80142412

Dr. Ford. Lesson 2. Cognitive Psychology.

Leave a Reply