Can You Learn in Your Sleep?

What would make you put food under the broiler, forget about it and take your dog for a walk?

This happened to me in 2013. I had experienced a brain injury after a car accident, and was having trouble with my memory for a few months. I came home to smoke in the house and a raging fire in my oven. The fire had to be put out with a fire extinguisher. My dog preferred to stay outside.

Memory is a fascinating topic. When we encounter new information, our brains have to assimilate it to remember it. Kind of like having a giant filing cabinet in your brain.

Within our brains, we have these incredibly important protein molecules called brain-derived neurotrophic factors, or BDNF for short. The neural path is reorganized when the brain assimilates new information, and it’s BDNF that stimulates this process.

Most fascinatingly, it’s only when you sleep that these changes become permanent! BDNF acts like a glue, solidifying all the new information you’ve been exposed to during your working day. The file cabinet in your brain rearranges files and reorganizes information while you sleep.

This is important for teachers and students to know because information is assimilated better when it’s delivered in small chunks rather than crammed in one long session. Long-term memory of learned concepts is achieved by keeping new information in small portions, and sleeping  between study sessions.