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| Dreaming can aid learning |
The movie Inception brought up considerable discussion on the nature of sleeping and dreaming. In the film learning was established through dreaming, so the character acted on the dreams when he awakened and at times could not distinguish between dreams and reality. But is it really possible to plant an idea while sleeping and can people learn during the process of sleeping and dreaming?
It turns out that science supports some of the notions presented in the film, although some of the ideas, with the layers of dreaming and the specific extraction, may be a bit far-fetched.
For one thing learning is possible during sleep. There are websites actually devoted to selling tapes and memory devices to aid learning while sleeping that range from special tapes to meditation manuals.
Sleep has been found to be a time when learning can take place. But the amount we sleep is not correlated with a longer phase for learning. In fact, reasonable sleep of 5 to 8 hours seems to be supportive of memory, while longer periods of habitual sleep have been shown to relate to certain health problems. Actually it has been found in certain studies that those who sleep 7 hours a night live longer than those who sleep 9 hours. Furthermore what is learned can be permanent, as the research on sleeping and dreaming observes that the learning can be life-long.
Dreaming about something can reinforce the memory of it. Scientists have found that having subjects dream about a special maze or puzzle aided people in recall of the specifics of it in comparison with those who stayed awake and did not dream of it. This same research offered the possibility that we actually dream in order to keep learning.
The research on the benefits of dreaming reinforces the fact that dreaming aids in learning. In a research study scientists established that people who dream about a given task end up performing it better when they wake up then people who do not sleep or do not dream. It may be one of the reasons people say they "sleep on it" when encountering a problem, as they may have learned, from the repeated phrase, that perhaps in sleep the answer to a given problem may appear and be resolved, or the answer found, upon waking.
The process of learning while sleeping and dreaming is not just confined to adults. Recent studies found in 2010 that infants dream and learn while sleeping. The National Institutes of Health found that newborn infants are capable of a simple form of learning. The organization maintains that this will help experts identify tests that can identify infants at risk for developmental disorders as the brain reveals certain characteristics during the sleeping and dreaming process.
Furthermore some of this same research, on how people learn, has found that the more satisfying and familiar a topic, the more it will be the subject of dreams.
Finally, dreams have been a subject of scientific study. Freud looked at dreaming as part of the subconscious minds fixation on certain concepts and images. On the other hand, modern scientists are more apt to use a technique called content analysis, where the subject writes down in a journal those things that are remembered, and these are then analyzed for topic, sequence and details. Freud's theories on dreaming remain part of the psychiatric literature for today's experts, even as they prepare for their professions. So the issues about dreaming and behavioral change have been studied for many decades.
So can ideas or information be examined or planted in your dreams? It seems so, given the research on sleeping and dreaming. And like the film Inception revealed, it is possible to identify familiar surroundings as well as to learn during the process.
