Sleep learning: Learn a language a week - you must be dreaming! - Telegraph.co.uk

[Dream Guide Team]

Article Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/we...-dreaming.html Full Text Below

[nina]

Sleep learning: Learn a language a week - you must be dreaming! Suppose it were possible to learn a new language, keep fit or stop smoking by sleeping on it? Literally. The theory of sleep learning or "hypnopaedia" was kick-started by novels like Brave New World. Here, having been played a George Bernard Shaw broadcast while asleep, a Polish-speaking boy is able to repeat it verbatim (and, presumably, with an Irish lilt) following morning. Thus inspired, companies started marketing sleep learning courses, usually endorsed by "leading psychologists". In one advertisement, a woman claims that, by playing Spanish tapes during sleep, at the end of just one week, she was in negotiations with a Venezuelan ambassador. Rubbish? Yes, probably. When sought, the psychologists are as elusive as the woman and her ambassador. Also, such courses are promoted by the same outfits that claim to be able to turn you from a seven-stone weakling into Daniel Craig in under a fortnight. "If only," says Florence Cardinal of Canada's National Sleep Foundation, (of the sleep learning, presumably, not turning into Craig). "In fact, disturbing sleep patterns in this way requires the brain to remain alert to listen, preventing you from attaining the sort of deep sleep which is actually so important for the mind." Cardinal recommends learning immediately before sleep. "Revise your material several times; try to commit it to memory. This allows the brain the time it needs to store and compile the information so it will be there when it's required. Then, off to bed, let the brain do the rest. You'll be surprised at how much you retain." Plus, if a First is more important than a 2.1, a visit to neuroscientist Jan Born of Lübeck University might wing it. He found that, by attaching electrodes to the heads of test subjects and firing a continuous 0.75 hertz current into their sleeping brains, he could boost retention of their previous day's memories by eight per cent. Less shocking is "lucid dreaming", a term coined by Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden. Here, sleepers are aware they're dreaming and can manipulate the dream. So, in your imagination, you could tell your boss what you really think of him, but without diurnal repercussions. But how is this useful? "If you can train yourself to be content in your dreams, this will impact on your waking life and make you a generally happier, healthier person," says health writer Dr Devadas. "You can revise for exams in your sleep, as I used to. Or if you're giving up smoking, you can assuage cravings by puffing in your dreams." Lucid dreaming only comes naturally to about 20 per cent of us, though most can be trained, says Dr Devadas. "Then," she says, "your life is limited only by your imagination."

[LRT]

20% of people are naturals?! Wow!

[EspadaInMyCloset]

20% of people are naturals?! Wow! I very much doubt it

[lucidreamsavy]

20% of people are naturals?! Wow! Maybe it's 20% of people have them a couple times a year, or something like that. I once read that 80% of 30 year olds have had at least one LD before...THAT I believe.

[Serenity]

Actually I called this technique "learning by osmosis" when I was in high school. I had the high hopes that sleeping with my head resting on the text book would absorb some of the words as I slept in class.... Seriously though, there's got to be some reasoning behind those language tapes... where you listen to basic words while you sleep. Sometimes sleep is meant to help solve problems, isn't it? Cardinal recommends learning immediately before sleep. "Revise your material several times; try to commit it to memory. This allows the brain the time it needs to store and compile the information so it will be there when it's required. Then, off to bed, let the brain do the rest. You'll be surprised at how much you retain." This part, yeah That's what I was getting at. I doubt you could be fluent in a new language in a week though... but who knows?

[Hidden]

Interesting, but nothing new really. The bit that es quoted seems like the most useful part (other than learning to lucid dream, but we all already knew about that).

[beachgirl]

does this mean we can learn to LD in a week if we have the right program?

[Hidden]

I think LDing is more of a skill than something you just need to learn and remember. Listening to a lucidity-related audio track while you sleep could be useful though, as could reviewing the things you learned about LDing before going to bed.

[hawheehawhee]

I was on a website once that said if you skim through a book really quickly without fully taking it in, you could then see it while you lucid dream and read it in your dreams.I'm not sure I believe it though.