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Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

bbc.com

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Yes and garbage collection. 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.

'schadenfreude'.

Epicaricacy.

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'schadenfreude'.

Epicaricacy.

Good luck using that in everyday light conversation. The required explanation will likely be longer than if you had used 'schadenfreude' in an English conversation!

And 'Epicaricacy' fortunately doesn't sound nearly as trendy and intellectual as a German word would.

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#23
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering the same thing. The article is rather vague about how they gave "a new list of words to participants" while they were sleeping...

If OpenBCI ships soon, people can try this at home :) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/openbci/openbci-an-open...

You can preorder now and they'll ship soon. The consensus is that they're a little pricey, though:

[1] http://openbci.com

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#24

As somebody with a sleep disorder, I've suspected this for some time. 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 th…

I'll create or solve some problem in my sleep and think it's the best thing since sliced bread, then wake up to find the idea not as amazing as I had thought it was.

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#25
post #11

Any task that could become automated could be maintained during sleep, he said. 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…

> 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. 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.

Yep, I solved several Math and Physics problems for school (I used to get into competitions), understood a martials arts technique (it was taught to us but nobody could make it work. In my dream I fought someone but I saw everything upside down, and there I figured the technique was very similar to other one we already knew, but upside down), and solved many programming problems I had when I started learning that.

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.

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#27
post #11

Any task that could become automated could be maintained during sleep, he said. 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…

> 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. 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.

When I was a kid I was stuck on a puzzle in "Ecco the Dolphin" (for the Sega Game Gear). I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night after I got through the puzzle while dreaming. Beat the whole game by morning.

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#28
What a surprise! I wrote a short story last year about the exact same phenomenon: http://daariga.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/the-dream-worker/

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 :-)

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#29
Shouldn't they be studying how we can get more restful sleep rather than fantasizing about extracting more work out of us? I don't consider it 'productive' (much less healthy) when I spend the night grinding on some technical problem. The Mendeleev anecdote and 'solving problems in your sleep' are about something entirely different, to me.

Re: Brain 'can classify words during sleep'

#30
post #11

Any task that could become automated could be maintained during sleep, he said. 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…

Excellent point but one can carry it further: why even wake them up! Sure, you can probably be much more efficient while awake but the gains may be more than compensated by the fact that it's so much easier to manipulate sleeping bodies. Once one contemplates this hellish scenario it becomes that The Matrix wasn't that much off (except for using humans as battery bit, which is BS; you use them for their organic processing units).
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