1 મે, 2026

"But there could be many downsides to interfering with an activity as essential and mysterious as sleep...."

"'Sleep has its own universe, and we should better use that moment for what it’s good for,' [one neuroscientist said]... Dreams are not some barren landscape waiting to be populated,... they follow their own rules and presumably serve their own inexplicable aims. 'We should care about them, promote them, and nurture them, rather than trying to replace them,' [he] said.... [Another dream researcher] discussed the dangers of trying to 'colonize' sleep with what she called 'wake-centric values.' In her own life, she might prefer to learn from sleep than learn during sleep."

From "It’s Possible to Learn in Our Sleep. Should We? New research suggests that people can communicate and even practice skills while dreaming" (The New Yorker).
આમના દ્વારા પોસ્ટ કરેલા Ann Althouse પર 2:20 PM
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33 ટિપ્પણીઓ:

tcrosse કહ્યું...

As a teenage boy I often practiced a useful skill while dreaming.

1/5/26 02:25 PM
mezzrow કહ્યું...

Huxley nods.

1/5/26 02:27 PM
Josephbleau કહ્યું...

People who have night terrors also learn from dreams. But it’s not fun.

I’ll eat when I’m hungry and drink when I’m dry, if the sleeping don’t kill me I’ll live till I die.

1/5/26 02:54 PM
Josephbleau કહ્યું...

But I do believe in mental rehearsal. If you are going to give a speech or do a specific sport, like a race, sit in a dark room and imagine every moment from beginning to end and you will often get your desired result.

1/5/26 02:57 PM
Old and slow કહ્યું...

I know people who claim to never remember their dreams, and that seems very strange to me. I have incredibly detailed and intricate (if often nonsensical) dreams. If I believed they carried any clear meaning, I would wonder if I am deeply disturbed. As it is, I just (mostly) enjoy them.

1/5/26 03:06 PM
Quayle કહ્યું...
આ ટિપ્પણી લેખક દ્વારા દૂર કરવામાં આવી છે.
1/5/26 03:13 PM
Quayle કહ્યું...

When I was young, for 2 months I studied Korean in an immersive classroom setting for 12 hours a day. During that time when I slept, I remember that I would dream "Korean", but it always seemed to me that I was somehow resorting or reshuffling things.

1/5/26 03:13 PM
Mason G કહ્યું...

"I know people who claim to never remember their dreams, and that seems very strange to me."

I rarely remember mine. And the ones I do remember seem to be mostly roaming around the parking lot, looking for my car.

1/5/26 03:16 PM
Howard કહ્યું...

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

1/5/26 03:19 PM
tim maguire કહ્યું...

Mason G said...I rarely remember mine. And the ones I do remember seem to be mostly roaming around the parking lot, looking for my car.

Same. The occasions when I do remember a dream, it’s usually a frustration dream. Weird, interesting, enjoyable dreams are extremely rare.

1/5/26 03:25 PM
Ambrose કહ્યું...

I recall this being a 60s thing - you would play records (vinyl 45 rpms) while you slept and learn stuff.

1/5/26 03:26 PM
Aggie કહ્યું...

It would seem that one of the most important discoveries about sleep is that it is tied to the lymph-like system within the brain that goes into a self-cleansing function each night. And the effectiveness of this nightly 'flushing' is tied to brain health and the avoidance of the onset of dementia and senility.

I don't know where these study topics presently sit, but it seems to me if they have discovered a beneficial health function tied to the brain, the next advance ought to consider optimizing it. What effect on brain function do these learning techniques have? Could they be harnessed, like the autogenic exercises are, to use the power of self-suggestion to improve autonomic function?

1/5/26 03:43 PM
Narr કહ્યું...

Before I retired, I had a recurring frustration dream--of being in a phone booth (remember those?) and unable to properly input a phone number or password necessary for a Highly Important Task. They stopped when I retired.

No insight needed for that.

Nowadays I rarely have a dream worth recalling, good or bad.

1/5/26 03:52 PM
n.n કહ્યું...
આ ટિપ્પણી લેખક દ્વારા દૂર કરવામાં આવી છે.
1/5/26 03:57 PM
n.n કહ્યું...

A chance to rebuild perchance AI to hallucinate.

1/5/26 03:58 PM
Yancey Ward કહ્યું...

I can remember my dreams but I have to make an effort to think about them as soon as I awake.

1/5/26 04:25 PM
Wilbur કહ્યું...

Ambrose said...
I recall this being a 60s thing - you would play records (vinyl 45 rpms) while you slept and learn stuff.

Yes, I remember it being the plot impetus for sitcoms in the 60s.

I almost never remember any of my dreams. I'm glad that my dreams are not disturbing or even noteworthy.

1/5/26 05:09 PM
Gerda Sprinchorn કહ્યું...

Thanks Yancey. Useful advice.

1/5/26 05:12 PM
Christopher B કહ્યું...

A couple days ago I read a post, I think on Instapundit, that reported on research into the claim blind people start using the visual portion of their brain for other sensation processing. They found that when you simply blindfold a normally sighted person for a relative short time the visual portion of their brain almost immediately gets invaded by other processing functions. One of the researchers theorized the visual portion of dreaming is a way for that portion of the brain to defend itself during the period we have no visual stimulus to process.

1/5/26 05:23 PM
RCOCEAN II કહ્યું...

Sometimes I'll have fantastic dreams like swimming in Las Vega in the moonlight with "The strip" turned into a river and monorail transformed into RIver boats traveling between Casinos. I often wish I'd kept a tape recorder next to my bed so I could record it right after i wake up.

1/5/26 05:29 PM
Gospace કહ્યું...

Old and slow said...
I know people who claim to never remember their dreams,

That used to be me. Then I started taking melatonin and/or tryptophan before bed. If I take them, I may or may not recall dreaming. And even if I remember what the dream was about- it quickly fades from memory no matter how I try to recall details.

I've often thought that many of the "mentally ill" are unable to determine which is real- their dream state or their awake state. Or even differentiate between the two. Most of us sane people have a solid wall between the two.

1/5/26 05:30 PM
RCOCEAN II કહ્યું...

Most people have nightmares as kids of being chased by something or somebody, and those go away as you get older. Unless you're an NFL Running back.

1/5/26 05:31 PM
RCOCEAN II કહ્યું...

Yeah, occassionaly I'll wake up and think "Wow, I didn't dream last night, that's weird". Its so rare I take note of it.

1/5/26 05:32 PM
RCOCEAN II કહ્યું...

Worst nightmare occured when I visited Thailand with my family and ate too much curry before going to bed. Wow, that was an experience.

1/5/26 05:33 PM
Gospace કહ્યું...

I forgot the theme- sleep learning. It's been a thing since at least when I was a teenager. And a staple of science fiction. And from what I can recall, has always been hocus pocus magic with no basis in reality. But great for selling useless courses in how to sleep learn... Without bothering to read the article I'm certain the finding should be published in The Journal of Irreproducible Results.

1/5/26 05:34 PM
Lazarus કહ્યું...

Yes, "sleep learning" was a fad in the 60s. Would it teach you to speak Mandarin? Probably not, but if you had a concussion or a psychotic break your family might find you speaking to them in fluent Chinese.

As for dreams, they were assumed to have great meaning, first by soothsayers, spiritualists, and occultists, then by Freudians and Jungians. Recently, it's been said that dreams are nothing, the scurf and detritus of the day that we get rid of by dreaming. Now maybe the pendulum is swinging back the other way -- or is it just that we shouldn't clog the drainpipe with extraneous matter?

1/5/26 05:46 PM
Michael Fitzgerald કહ્યું...

Appointment in Tomorrow by Fritz Leiber...."while George Helmuth slept his Educational Sandman purred learnedly teaching him calculus through the night."
https://youtu.be/LIiYJPc6BBk?si=Qu_5Kgb_COgWm93A

1/5/26 05:56 PM
Freder Frederson કહ્યું...

We used to call it "studying by osmosis" when I was in college.

1/5/26 06:02 PM
boatbuilder કહ્યું...

Don't mess with my sleep. It's hard enough to get real sleep as it is. Dreams are a wonderful bonus. Learning while you sleep? Hell, NO!

1/5/26 06:22 PM
john mosby કહ્યું...

Sometimes I have dreams with a backstory. Something is assumed to have happened before the dream starts. Like say I had a dog but it died (not an actual example; trying to keep it PG and private here). Then when I wake up, I know the dream itself wasn't real, but I am confused about the backstory: did I really used to have a dog?

I'm sure there is some neurological discovery waiting in that: different categories of memory or something. Or memory we could deliberately reprogram like an EEPROM. CC, JSM

1/5/26 06:25 PM
Craig Mc કહ્યું...

Dreams are where you tell yourself what's important.

Your waking self just thinks it knows what's important.

1/5/26 06:34 PM
Original Mike કહ્યું...

I don't know about learning while asleep, but I definitely solve problems while I'm sleeping. Especially math and physics problems but lots of other stuff too, like how to build or repair something. I routinely wake up with the answer to recently pondered problems. The effect is so profound that I purposely go over problems before bed with the intent of priming the pump. I've been doing this since college.

1/5/26 06:38 PM
tcrosse કહ્યું...

A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep"

1/5/26 08:07 PM

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