Brain 'can classify words during sleep'
bbc.com
bbc.com
So someone who is highly trained could continue to work while they are asleep. ie, an expert stock broker could classify market data (as interpreted by EEG readings) throughout the night. Interesting, and a bit worrisome to think that some corporations could use this technology to get 16 hour days out of employees.
I am interested in the idea of continuing to "work" while sleeping. I've read anecdotes about people who solve technical problems in their dreams and the concept of getting a few more mental hours out of the day is very appealing. Time is arguably the most valuable resource and anything that can create more of it has potential to have a big impact. Hopefully this early result will turn into something bigger, ideally some kind of technology that allows people to communicate with themselves while sleeping. For that, I would pay a lot.
edit: Also, does this method have any value as a lie detector? Someone could ask a target true or false questions and record their EEG readings, and then ask a different set of questions while the target is asleep. Even the most skilled liar might not be able to deceive while unconscious.
Have you never experienced it? I've found it's very common that I'll sleep on a problem and have solutions in the morning.
"Using dream incubation for problem solving, Dr. Barrett, the author of “The Committee of Sleep,” which expanded on her initial research, asks patients to write down a problem as a brief phrase or sentence and place the note next to the bed. Then she tells them to review the problem for a few minutes before going to bed, and once in bed, visualize the problem as a concrete image, if possible.
As they are drifting off to sleep, the patients should tell themselves they want to dream about the problem and ideally keep a pen and paper, and perhaps a flashlight or a pen with a lit tip, on the night table. No matter what time they wake up, they should lie quietly before getting out of bed, note whether there is “any trace of a recalled dream and invite more of the dream to return if possible.” They should write down everything they remember. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnopompic, "A hypnopompic state is the state of consciousness leading out of sleep ... When the awakening occurs out of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, in which most dreams occur, the hypnopompic state is sometimes accompanied by lingering vivid imagery. Some of the creative insights attributed to dreams actually happen in this moment of awakening from REM"
With segmented sleep, there are two daily instances of sleep-wake transition, so the chance of capturing notes is doubled, http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/...
Sleeping on the problem and having fresh insights of course is such a common experience as to be pedestrian.
I also feel like my naps defragment my brain even when I'm not 100% unconscious. I go through things that happened that morning or the day before and kind of classify everything. Sometimes I understand how the people I interacted with felt. Things that in the moment they occurred I couldn't appreciate. Like when you consciously try to think things from the other person's perspective, but dreaming sometimes forces me to do that.
This is one that every russian kid knows from school days:
"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."
—Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev#Periodic_table
[0] Original paywalled source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6972/full/nature0...; free-to-access copy: https://www.msu.edu/course/psy/401/Readings/WK9.PresentA.Wag...
So they advise when you are stuck to sleep on it, to allow the diffuse mode to kick in.
If you are interested, I would recommend you to follow the course. Most of the advice are not earth shattering, but I found the explanation on how our brains work when learning quite interesting.
There is no free lunch in biology.
I just can't throw it out of my head that this would be a step towards ending like in this poem:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8o6/the_gift_we_give_to...
("em" in the poem means "emulated human", i.e. a mind running on computer hardware)
Quite a shock to see it being found to be true as a research finding. Many of the details in the story matched so closely to the research methodology that I still cannot believe this is happening :-)
My favorite line was:
> Looking around curiously at the other passengers, she wondered how many of them were trading in their dreams for small change.
I pictured my brain sorting out words and linkages as I slept. Makes sense for the brain to require partial downtime for a index reorganisation.
Funnily enough I'm now at the stage where certain German expressions and mannerisms have started to surplant my native British English ones. Germans often have one word for something where in English you need a whole sentence. Somehow these words creep into your vocabulary and merge across the language boundaries.
And 'Epicaricacy' fortunately doesn't sound nearly as trendy and intellectual as a German word would.
Something tells me there's a word for that, concision (or brevity or conciseness). But something auf Deutsch would me more trendy and intellectual sounding ...
I think you keep on thinking while sleeping (at the higher levels), it's just a bit dissociative and you don't remember any of it. In fact, that's probably where you can do a lot of your best creative work.
Many times I'll "solve" a problem while deep in sleep, think to myself "Hey! I just solved this! I need to remember." then forget completely the next day -- only to come around to the solution again later on, seemingly on my own.
Sleep is a very strange process.
I remember a time when I was "on call". The phone rang at 04:00. It wound up being a long discussion, necessary to manage a complex problem. Strangely, when I got to work I had no recollection at all of what happened overnight, and stunned when I found out what I'd done (correctly too).
Handling a few words wouldn't be such a big deal.
EEG-based interrogation of sleeping people?!
"This study uncovers a promising avenue to study nonconscious processes ... although sleeping participants may continue to process information in a goal-oriented manner, this task set is presumably maintained without the participant being conscious of it ... studying sleep in this context allows pushing further the limits and extents of nonconscious processes and establishing the properties of a broader and more natural type of cognitive unconscious."
Another article, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140911125806.ht...
"The study also extends earlier work on subliminal processing by showing that speech processing and other complex tasks "can be done not only without being aware of what you perceive, but [also] without being aware at all." Kouider suspects that such unconscious processing isn't limited by the complexity of the task, but by whether it can be made automatic or not."
My subconscious brain is way better than my waking brain when it comes to untangling problems where there are more than about 4 or 5 levels of abstraction/indirection.
It is pretty common for me to be dealing with some hairy issue that spans multiple levels and then go to sleep and wake up with the seemingly obvious answer. Even without sleep I can often get similar results by just going for a long walk while listening to music and specifically not "thinking" (consciously) about the problem that is vexing me.
When there are lots of layers to a problem (and I basically understand all the layers but have trouble following all of the indirections), the less I "think" about the problem (consciously), the easier the solution comes.