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Remember those educational cassettes that you’d supposedly learn from overnight? Well, scientific evidence says they're bunk—unless you listen to them while you’re up during the night, that is.
But if you’re actually sleeping and you play something that you've already learned, like a piano melody you've been practicing, you may indeed master it more quickly. So says a study in the journal Nature Neuroscience. [James Antony et al, Cued memory reactivation during sleep influences skill learning]
Researchers asked volunteers—with and without musical experience—to learn a few random melodies on a computer keyboard. Then the subjects took a 90-minute nap. When they slipped into slow wave sleep—a stage previously shown to be associated with memory processing—the researchers softly played back one of the two melodies.
After the subjects woke up, they were able to play both melodies more accurately—the helpful effects of a little shuteye, the researchers say. But the volunteers did even better on the ditty they'd heard while snoozing, suggesting sensorimotor skills can be fine-tuned by exposure during sleep.
The scientists stress that the procedure is no shortcut to becoming Scott Joplin—you still have to put in effort while awake. But a little sleep-time study may help you change your tune for the better.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
[Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.]
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11 Comments
Add CommentMost of what I've read, that makes best sense, is that our body needs the time to sort thoughts and repair itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould anyone tell me what "change your tune" means here?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit means ‘improve what you have already learned’
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA better question is - what does this mean?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"After the subjects woke up, they were able to both melodies more accurately..."
Once again, specific test results are being inappropriately generalized. While this test of hearing music while sleeping and playing music on a computer keyboard indicates some benefits, can this same result be expected for other sensorimotor skills - as implied?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suggest this result applies only to musical skills - where language decoding is not necessary. Otherwise, similar improvements should occur if the production of correct notes on the keyboard is described during sleep rather than musical playback.
Similarly, I suggest a test of skilled and unskilled origami students who listen to paper folding instructions during sleep to determine if the subjects can more correctly produce specific sculptures, for example...
Perhaps a test should be conducted in which music is played during sleep to determine whether knitting skills might be improved!
*Link to come*. WHEN?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA good link to reading about this research:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/nu-ltt062212.php
Thank you very much for replying~
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Link to come"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Antony, J.W., Gobel, E.W., O'Hare, J.K., Reber, P.J., & Paller, K.A. (in press). Cued memory reactivation during sleep influences skill learning, Nature Neuroscience"
In press, i.e., not yet published
From: http://pallerlab.psych.northwestern.edu/pubs.html
@ *marclevesque*.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks!
Nonetheless, this knowledge does not change the fact that we – internauts - continue without an available and free text complementary linked from the podcast.
Thanks very much! The AAAS EurekAlert link is very useful for all science news items http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php?start=0
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