Your Brain Pays Attention to Unfamiliar Voices, Even While You Sleep

The findings could suggest it's possible to learn simple information while snoozing.   View in browser

Image credits: Shutterstock Your Brain Pays Attention to Unfamiliar Voices, Even While You Sleep The findings could suggest it's possible to learn simple information while snoozing. Brian Owens, Contributor January 18, 2022       (Inside Science) -- Even when sleeping deeply you are more aware of what is going on around you than you might realize. New research suggests that the human brain is constantly monitoring its surroundings, including processing sounds, to decide if you need to wake up -- it could even let you learn in your sleep. Manuel Schabus, a neuroscientist at the University of Salzburg in Austria, and his colleagues wanted to see what kind processing the brain could do while asleep. The researchers played a recording while their adult test subjects slept through a night. The recording included familiar and unfamiliar voices speaking different names, including the subject's own name. Whether the name was the subject's own or something different had no effect on brain activity. But the familiarity of the voice made a big difference... Read more Copyright 2022 American Institute of Physics. Inside Science syndicates its articles, columns, blogs and videos to news organizations. To initiate syndication, or request permission to republish our content (on a one-time or continuing basis), please contact Inside Science at insidescience@aip.org. News organizations seeking permission to republish Inside Science content must fully credit Inside Science as the original source of the content, include the author byline, and republish the original, unaltered form (excluding content titles, headlines, or sub-headlines). The reprint format can be seen here. Copyright conditions and usage terms are subject to change at any time without consent or any type of prior notice. To unsubscribe from all future mailings from Inside Science please click here. To manage your email subscriptions please click here.

Inside Science is an editorially independent news service of the American Institute of Physics © 2022 American Institute of Physics 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 About Inside Science | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Reprint Rights  | Email alerts  |  Underwriters