边睡边学，可能吗？
作者：巴哈尔戈利普尔
来源：《英语世界》2020年第07期
There are only 24 hours in a day， and usually about a third of that is spent sleeping. So， the overambitious have always wondered： Is it possible to make u of this time and learn a new skill or even a language？ In other words， is sleep learning possible？
The answer is yes and no， depending on what we mean by “learning.”
Absorbing complex information or picking up a new skill from scratch by， say1， listening to an audio recording during sleep is almost certainly impossible. But rearch shows that the sleeping brain is far from idle and that some forms of learning can happen. However， whether that’s worth losing sleep over has yet to be determined.
Sleep learning： From sham2 to science
The concept of sleep learning， or hypnopedia3， has a long history. The first study to demonstrate a memory and learning benefit from sleep was published in 1914 by German psychologist Rosa Heine. She found that learning new material in the evening before sleep results in better recall compared to learning during the day.
Thanks to many studies done since then， we now know that sleep is crucial for forming long-term memories of what we have encountered during the day. The sleeping brain replays the day’s experiences and stabilizes them by moving them from the hippocampus4， where they are first formed， to regions across the brain. Given that so much is happening to memories during sleep， it’s natural to ask if the memories can be altered， enhanced or even formed anew.
One popular approach to sleep learning was Psycho-phone5， a popular device in the 1930s. It played out motivational messages to sleepers， such as “I radiate love，” suppodly helping the people absorb the ideas in their subconscious and wake up with radiant confidence.
At first， it emed that rearch backed up the idea behind devices like Psycho-phone. Some early studies found that people learned the material they encountered during sleep. But tho findings were debunked6 in the 1950s， when scientists began to u EEG7 to monitor sleep brain waves. Rearchers found that if any learning had happened， it was only becau the stimuli had woken the participants. The poor studies launched sleep learning into the trash can of pudoscience.
But in recent years， studies have found that the brain may not be a total blob8 during sleep. The findings suggest that it is possible for the sleeping brain to absorb information and even form new memories. The catch9， however， is that the memories are implicit， or unconscious. Put10 another way， this form of learning is extremely basic， much simpler than what your brain has to accomplish if you want to learn German or quantum mechanics.
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Still， the findings have elevated sleep learning from the category of pipe dreams11 and put it back on scientists’ radar.
“For decades the scientific literature12 was saying sleep learning was impossible. So， even eing the most basic form of learning is interesting for a scientist，” said Thomas Andrillon， a neuroscientist at Monash University in Melbourne， Australia. “But people are not really interested in this basic form of learning.”
For scientists， the recent discoveries have raid hopes about possible applications， Andrillon told Live Science13. For example， the implicit nature of sleep learning makes the phenomenon uful for people who want to shed a bad habit， like smoking， or form new good ones.
Rotten eggs and smoking： Making associations
Multiple studies have found that a basic form of learning， called conditioning， can happen during sleep. In a 2012 study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience， for example， Israeli rearchers found that people can learn to associate sounds with odors during sleep. The scientists played a tone to sleeping study participants while unleashing a nasty spoiled-fish smell. Once awake， upon hearing the tone， the people
held their breath in anticipation of a bad smell.
“This was a clear finding showing humans can form new memories during sleep，” said Andrillon， who was not involved in that study.
Although the memory was implicit歌颂祖国作文
， it could affect the people’s behavior， rearchers found in a 2014 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. In that rearch， smokers ud fewer cigarettes after spending a night being expod to the smell of cigarettes paired with rotten eggs or spoiled fish.
“Guga” means elephant： Learning languages during sleep？
Andrillon and his colleagues have found that learning in sleep can go beyond simple conditioning. In their 2017 study published in the journal Nature Communications， subjects were able to pick out complex sound patterns that they had heard during sleep.
Learning abilities in sleep may extend to the learning of words. In a study published in the journal Current Biology， rearchers played pairs of made-up words and their sup
pod meanings， like that “guga” means elephant， to sleeping participants. After this， when awake， the people performed better than chance when they had to pick the right translation of made-up words in a multichoice test.
