Science News

This week I read a very interesting article called, “ Learning in Your Sleep“, by Stephen Ornes, on the Science News for Kids website  (link to article).

“Learning in Your Sleep” was about how scientists have actually proved that people can learn brand new information as they are snoozing.  Scientists played a sound accompanied by either a good or bad smell while volunteers were sleeping.  When the sound for the good smell played, the person would take a deep breath, wanting to smell the refreshing aroma;  when the sound for the bad smell played, they’d take short breath, not wanting to breathe in that gross odor.  The smell was then taken away, but the sound still played, and volunteers reacted in the same way, even once they had woken up.  The volunteers had learned that the sounds were connected to different smells, and now scientists are using this study as proof that we can learn new information as we are sleeping.

I chose this article as my piece because its about great new research that could effect me and the lives of my students some day in the future.  YOU may be thinking, who cares about learning a sound that goes with a smell.  What's the point?  True, it isn’t all  that useful.  BUT imagine that they do further research on learning in your sleep.  Maybe they will begin find that people can learn harder things while they are conked out… like algebra!  What if some day teachers assign kids homework to do while they are sleeping!  A kid goes to bed, does his homework in the night while he’s passed out, then comes to school knowing how to solve a tough word problem. This could be the homework of the future!

I also think the article does a great job of teaching kids about the process of scientific inquiry.  When the same test is done in the same way with many volunteers, it makes the results of the inquiry valid.  So, the study has proven, on the basis of the results of many people, that we can learn in our sleep. That's a great lesson to any scientist.  The proof is in finding the same results many times over.

While all this is very exciting, I do wonder how much more research they are going to conduct, because we are a long ways off from making it useful in our day-to-day life.  Do you think if you spend all night learning in your sleep, you’ll wake up more tired in the morning because your brain didn’t really get much rest?  

This is exciting research, and I can’t wait to read more updates as scientists continue to explore this topic.  Until then, sorry kids, you’ll still be doing homework while you are conscious.

Until next time, 

Miss Z.