Brain continues working as we sleep - study

Brain continues working as we sleep. PHOTO| FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The sleeping brain, the study said, can perform complex tasks – and it’s even more robust when the task is automated.

A new study has revealed that the brain remains active even as we asleep.

The study, published in the Journal of Current Biology, found that people could classify words when they were asleep.

The sleeping brain, the study said, can perform complex tasks – and it’s even more robust when the task is automated.

The researchers from UK and French universities introduced participants to a word test while awake and found that they continued to respond correctly while asleep.

DRIFTED OFF

When the participants were awake, the researchers used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to record their brain activity while asking them to classify spoken words by pressing a button, as either animals (right hand) or objects (left hand).

This, the researchers explained, allowed them to track the responses and map each word category to a specific movement in the brain.

Thereafter, the participants were asked to lie down in a darkened room with their eyes closed and continue with the word classification as they drifted off to sleep.

Once they were asleep, a new list of words was tested on them to ensure that the brain had to work out the meaning before classifying them using the buttons.

“Their brain activity showed they continued to respond accurately,” the researchers said, “but slower than normally”.

FALLING ASLEEP

Commenting on the findings, one of the lead researchers, cognitive neuroscientist Dr Sid Kouider from Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, said the findings provided a foundation on which they could build by exploring further, which could lead to reaping benefits from sleep time.

“We show that the sleeping brain can be far more ‘active’ in sleep than someone would think or imagine.” he said.

He said the findings lend credence to everyday experiences such as our sensitivity to our name when we’re asleep, or to the specific sound of our alarm clock compared to equally loud but less relevant sounds.

He added that it was possible for people to perform work out simple equations while falling asleep and then continue to identify those calculations as right or wrong during a snooze.

The research could lead to further studies on the processing capacity of our sleeping brains, the study said.

“Research focusing on how to take advantage of our sleeping time must consider what the associated cost, if any, is, and whether it is worth it,” Dr Kouider pointed out.