Can You Learn While Sleeping?

To function your best, you need good quality sleep. Experts recommend at least seven hours of sleep each night for most adults, so many wonder if they can maximize this time. While some companies in the past promised that sleep recordings or other devices could help you learn a new topic, little scientific evidence exists to support these claims. However, sleep is a critical part of the learning process, and a few ways exist to enhance your learning by using strategies while you sleep.

So, can you learn while sleeping? Examine how sleep affects learning, how different sleep stages affect your brain, and what skills are best to enhance while you snooze.

How sleep affects learning 

Sleep plays a critical role in your ability to learn new material and memorize existing ones. When you sleep, your brain is highly active. Experts have categorized sleep into four stages that you cycle through every 80 to 100 minutes, each associated with a specific brain function. 

REM vs. non-REM sleep

In these four stages, you have one stage of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep after three stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. REM sleep is typically associated with dreaming, while NREM sleep makes up around 75 to 80 percent of your sleep period and helps repair and restore the body [1].

During NREM sleep, you go through the first three stages of sleep. Stage one NREM sleep is the lightest form of sleep and only lasts a few minutes. This stage occurs when you're drifting off to sleep. 

In stage two of NREM sleep, your heart rate, breathing, eye movements, and muscle activity can slow. Your body temperature also drops, and your brain waves slow down. Brain activity that registers sleep spindles and K-complexes on an electroencephalography (EEG) is common in this phase.

In stage three, your heart rate, muscle activity, brain waves, and breathing are at their slowest. This is deep sleep, and it is the most important stage for repairing the body. During stage three of NREM sleep, your brain produces delta waves, known as slow waves. These waves are slower and make it more difficult for you to wake. 

Which sleep stage is best for learning?

NREM sleep is the most important stage for memory and learning enhancement. During NREM sleep, your brain consolidates memories from the day and begins to encode them into your short or long-term memory. Much of your emotional processing happens while you sleep. 

NREM sleep also helps both your declarative and procedural memory. Declarative memory is what allows you to recall facts, while procedural memory helps you remember how to perform skills. Some researchers theorize that sleep spindles during NREM sleep contribute to neural connections and help to organize information. By optimizing information and pathways, you can learn better the next day. As people age, they experience fewer sleep spindles and slow waves during sleep, which may explain why children often learn new information more quickly than adults. 

Studies are ongoing, and researchers are continually making breakthroughs to better understand how sleep and learning are connected. Despite this, a clear association exists between sleep patterns, learning while asleep, and remembering new information. Getting high-quality sleep can help your brain process existing information, regulate emotions and thought patterns, and prime your brain to learn new material effectively.

Sleep deprivation and learning

When you’re sleep-deprived, your brain doesn’t get enough slow-wave sleep. This can affect your memory processing and your ability to learn new information. When you refrain from getting enough NREM sleep, your brain has more difficulty storing information you’ve learned. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley discovered that stage three sleep is critical for long-term memory storage, and according to the National Institutes of Health, not sleeping enough can lower a person’s ability to learn new material by up to 40 percent [2]. 

What can you learn while sleeping? 

Several types of information are better suited to being enhanced through sleep. Below are two types of information that can be processed while learning.

1. Learning language 

Language may be one area in which more advanced “sleep learning” occurs. In one study published in Current Biology, researchers found that slow waves during sleep can be associated with learning languages [3]. Young German-speaking men and women had a combination of fake and real German words played for them while sleeping. When researchers played word pairs during a slow-wave peak, it was more likely that the participants would have an association between these words when they woke. 

2. Learning music

Music is another area that shows promise for sleep learning. In one study by Northwestern University, participants learned to play a specific guitar melody before taking a nap. During sleep, half of the participants had the melody played for them, while the other half did not. When they woke up, those who had the music played during sleep had a better recall of the melody and were able to play it more effectively [4].

How to improve sleep 

Improving sleep can have beneficial effects on your memory and learning, but how do you enhance your sleep life? To improve your sleep, try these several tips at home: 

• Develop a consistent sleeping schedule: If you go to sleep and wake at the same time each day, you can help improve your sleep quality.

• Create a relaxing space: To improve your sleep, focus on creating a bedroom space that is dark, quiet, relaxing, and a comfortable temperature. 

• Keep electronics out of the bedroom: Before going to sleep, try to spend time away from screens, such as your phone, computer, or TV.

• Practice a healthy lifestyle: Regularly exercising, eating well, and limiting alcohol and caffeine can help improve your sleep.

Next steps 

Studies show that sleep is highly important to our ability to learn and store memories. You can also find evidence that sleep can help people consolidate and recall information. Studies suggest that it is possible to improve language and music learning while sleeping. 

To discover more about sleep and its benefits, check out some exciting courses on Coursera taught by top universities. Get started with Sleep: Neurobiology, Medicine, and Society offered by the University of Michigan, and earn a shareable certificate. You can also explore topics related to learning through courses such as Learning How to Learn for Youth by Arizona State University or Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential by McMaster University.