“Babies can apparently learn even while asleep, a new study reveals.
As newborns spend most of their time asleep, this newfound ability might be crucial to rapidly adapt to the world around them and help to ensure their survival, researchers said.
In experiments with 26 sleeping infants, each just one to two days old, scientists played a musical tone followed by a puff of air to their eyes 200 times over the course of a half-hour. A network of 124 electrodes stuck on the scalp and face of each baby also recorded brain activity during the experiments.
The babies rapidly learned that they could expect a puff of air upon hearing the tone, showing a four-fold increase on average in the chances of tightening their eyelids in response to the sound by the end of each session.
“It’s surprising how quickly they learned — the study took 30 minutes, but I think they actually learned this in half that time,” said researcher William Fifer, a developmental neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York. “We knew that a baby’s job is to be an information gatherer, a data sponge, but I don’t think we realized this also happens when they’re sound asleep.”"
Read more at Live Science (Thanks @soulmate02)
I’m not sure about them learning while they sleep but when I take baby portraits while they sleep they always seem to smile at some point. Is that a dream or maybe them learning something?
http://www.richardbarryphotography.com
Wasn’t there a post some tme ago about feotus in womb learning as well?
The brain never stops ..I think babies should not get OD’ed with this type of experiments .. they might get numb otherwise and learn less well.
We all still respond without knowing from our daily self to signals when we are asleep. Although at times the alarm clock is still something I dont recognize rightaway .. What is that is the question of my sleeping mind .. let’s get to the surface to check what that annoying sound is ….
Huxley was talking about this sort of thing in his Brave New World. nice to see science doing justice to the imagination and creativity of our past.
@Peter too, it’s a pleasure coming across your replies on this blog
As a dad-to-be, is there anything I can do to provide stimulus while my baby sleeps?
Play music?
@Sam – Better to let sleeping babies lie. You don’t need to teach them while they sleep if you engage them in fun and creative ways when they are awake. A good night sleep is essential to learning.
26 people will expect a puff of air when listening to that note when they grow up and they won’t know why.
You shouldn’t do anything close to experiments with the minds of infants, I would think these stuff get hardwired..
@Kev and @Peter too: my instinct is to agree with you, particularly where any experiment is not consensual or cannot be agreed to by the subject.
However, I am pretty sure that the experiment shows that the human brain is always making associations between experiences. Imagine how many random correlations there must be! The brain ‘stores’ these associations and then ‘prunes’ them: the associations that are not functional or regularly repeated are quickly lost. It is called neuroplasticity. Unless you have autism, in which case you may store associations and link habits or behaviour to environments throughout your life.
I remember something in the New Scientist about the infant brain that showed that after a certain age the brain prunes a great number of neural connections.
So when my friends laughed at me for explaining the world to my sleeping infants, I was right & they were idiots.
I always knew it but it’s nice to have it confirmed.
BTW, all my kids have above average IQs & general knowlege.
@zorger – Yes a good night’s sleep is important & this is one of the reasons it is important.
Did you not read the whole posting ?
They learn QUICKER in their sleep.
@Sam – Don’t play music every time they sleep, talk to them as well.
Does remind anyone of “Brave New World?”
Even though there have been lots of experiments on the brain subject, I wouldn’t say they(science) have a good basis of knowledge about brain functions. Actually if people weren’t so clumsy to stick nails and axes through their brains and still live we would still be in darkness on the subject..Ok there’s MRI also, but still..
I would think that you shouldn’t plug music or talking constantly during a child\’s sleep, simply because nature does not require you to do so. Good things to do though is to keep a children close to you so he can feel/hear your heart beating, that has been proven to give a feeling of safety and help him sleep better..It works with cats and dogs too, probably with many more mammals.