You have probably seen those ads promoting listening to thing while going sleep like audiobooks or lectures in order to get smarter or improve cognitive function or something like that. I have always been skeptical of those. I thought “How could you possibly learn while unconscious?” It doesn’t seem possible. It is like something out of science-fiction like brain-washing or memory alteration. Turns out it can happens.
I was looking around for interested neuroscience topics to discuss and I found this TED video called How Sound can hack your mind while you sleep . It is really interesting. It discusses an experiment where participants play a memory game involving sounds like cars and horns. The participants then take a nap in which their EEG are recorded. In the slow-wave or deep sleep stage of sleeping, when it really hard to be woken up,the sounds are played back to them, but only half of them. Car engine may be played, but horns may not. We then they wake they again play the memory game and we see the results. And they are significant, participants did a much better job remembering where the objects where when the sounds were played.
Neuroscientist believe that during slow-wave sleeps a process called memory consolidation occurs. During this process, experiences during the day are converted from short-term memories to long-term ones. This may be linked with why the results came up as they did. This shows that we can make some memories more memorable over others.
In any case, stuff like this is what makes the field of cognitive science so interesting. There is still much more to discover about the mind, its mysteries, and its capacity.
Thanks for reading, have a great day!
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