Scientists fascinated by the idea that humans might be able to learn while asleep — a new language or a piece of music — have long been coming up with clashing experimental results.
On Tuesday, a team said it has finally unraveled why.
The human brain can learn only in certain phases of shut-eye.
Participants in a study were able to memorize sound patterns played to them during two phases of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) and N2, researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications.
REM is the phase of unconsciousness during which we typically dream, and is characterized, as its name suggests, by the eyes flitting about restlessly. N2 is a phase of lighter, non-REM sleep.
However, a third phase of deep, non-REM sleep called N3 was positively bad for memory formation, the researchers said.
“Sounds previously learned during N2 sleep are forgotten or unlearned, as if erased from memory,” the French team said in a statement.
They had wired 23 volunteers up to electroencephalogram brain monitors and played them recordings of sound patterns while they slept.
When they awoke, the trial participants were tested on how well they could remember the simple compositions.
The team “observed a sharp distinction between light NREM sleep, during which learning was possible, and deep NREM sleep, during which learning was suppressed,” the journal said in a news briefing.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and