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Your brain makes decisions while you sleep
- RyanOD 12y agoWhen I was studying piano as a child, my instructor required me to practice the song I was working on just before going to bed and again when I woke up. I always assumed this helped my brain solidify the mechanics of the song.
- linguafranca 12y agoOnly slightly related, but I often solve hard(ish) programming problems while I'm in that state between asleep and awake throughout the night. Take that, cliche!
- hasenj 12y ago> At the end of the experiment and after they woke up, participants had no memory of the words they heard during their sleep, though they recalled the words heard while they were awake very well. So not only did they process complex information while being completely asleep, but they did it unconsciously I think that even while awake, the decision making happens first unconsciously, then it gets brought into our consciousness. You think that you are thinking about it, but actually you're just waiting for your subconscious to arrive at the answer and tell it to you.
- emilsedgh 12y ago"you've already made the choice. Now you have to understand it." -- The Oracle Edit: If that's true, its freaks me out. Maybe our intelligence is overrated if we make our decisions while unconscious. In other words, if I'm making choices while unconscious, are my knowledge, belief, moral compass, etc involved?
- entelechy0 12y agoThey might be involved in lying to yourself in order to justify acts you perform that fall outside of your belief-spectrum ;)
- shaunxcode 12y agoDoes the source code you load into a computer have any relation to the runtime behavior?
- hasenj 12y agoSure they are. The decision process is so complicated, if you were aware of every step in the algorithm, it'd be slow as hell!
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoIts hard to discuss this topic because the words are used in different ways. We all know what it means to be conscious - aware of our surrounding, alert and responsive. It means the same thing as 'not asleep'. What's the word for the mental processing we do when awake, but are not personally aware of? Is it also 'unconscious'? Isn't there another word we can use?
- brational 12y ago>What's the word for the mental processing we do when awake, but are not personally aware of? Is it also 'unconscious'? Isn't there another word we can use? Subconscious.
- madvoid 12y agoSam Harris has written an interesting book on free will that comes to that same conclusion.
- Arjuna 12y ago"I think that even while awake, the decision making happens first unconsciously, then it gets brought into our consciousness." If you aren't familiar with Benjamin Libet [1] and his neuropsychology experiments, I think you will find them absolutely fascinating. From the article: "This work soon crossed into an investigation into human consciousness; his most famous experiment was meant to demonstrate that the unconscious electrical processes in the brain called Bereitschaftspotential (or readiness potential) discovered by Lüder Deecke and Hans Helmut Kornhuber in 1964 precede conscious decisions to perform volitional, spontaneous acts, implying that unconscious neuronal processes precede and potentially cause volitional acts which are retrospectively felt to be consciously motivated by the subject." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet
- kathrinalewis 12y agoWhat a wonderful capacity of the human brain! Now you must make sure that corporations and the military know all about this, so that people can work and fight wars during their sleep.
- treehau5 12y agoArticle seemed to make a quantum leap here > But most importantly, our work revives that age-old fantasy of learning during our sleep Can someone elaborate on how responding to preconditioned stimuli (a voice repeating the same question over and over) can translate to learning things while we are asleep?
- PeterWhittaker 12y agoMy guess - and it is nothing more - is that there may be a possibility of learning procedural tasks, making them more and more automatic, provided that one begins the procedural task prior to falling asleep, as in this experiment. As noted in the article, brain centers associated with attention are deactivated during sleep, so the possibility of acquiring semantic or episodic knowledge seems remote, as does the possibility of acquiring procedural knowledge without the "start it just before falling asleep" condition.
- untothebreach 12y agoI thought the same thing, especially right after they explained that the subjects had no memories of the words they "responded" to while they were asleep. I know learning != memorization, but it seems like being able to remember a lesson is at least a part of learning.
- lukeholder 12y agoIs there any research to suggest you can learn while sleep by listening to audio recordings? I have heard about it before but thought it was quackery?
- PeterWhittaker 12y agoAs noted in the article, brain centers associated with attention are deactivated during sleep, so acquisition of semantic knowledge seems unlikely, as you suggest. The experiment's novel condition was to begin a procedural task before sleep then continue the task as subjects fell asleep and slept, monitoring them the whole time. Cf my other comment in this thread.
- derekp7 12y agoThis does remind me of a Peanuts comic that my 6th grade teacher had up on the cork board. It had Charlie Brown putting his school book under his pillow, and he said he was going to study for his exam through osmosis.
- batrat 12y agoIsn't the same study? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306849 (6 days ago)
- pacofvf 12y ago"sleep on it" now makes more sense, in Spanish we have something similar "consúltalo con la almohada", which loosely means "ask your pillow about it"
- nitid_name 12y agoFast forward to the point where we're able to utilize this sleeping brain function to some level of usefulness. I wonder how this sort of sleep-work will affect the quality of one's sleep and their cognitive functioning in the long term.
- Terr_ 12y agoThe dystopian-cyberpunk perspective would say that it'll be a new kind of sweatshop, with poorer people slowly burning out, selling their sleeping hours as the lowest form of labor. Alternately, we might find that certain people are very good at certain tasks, and it'll be a more like trade guilds.
- xmmx 12y agoWasn't there a movie by Christopher Nolan about this same concept?
- petercooper 12y agoThis is quite a specific test, but I often get creeped out by how well "sleeping on it" works. I don't even have to actively think many hards problem (in my usual problem domain, naturally) but a day or two later a solution will appear in a flash. This annoys some people, because they'll ask "how shall we do X?" and I'll want it to sit and compost for a few days as I know the solution will be better than something forced!
- narag 12y agoI often try the negative hypothesis: maybe it's just that X (sleep in this case) removes something that was preventing Y, instead of X causing Y. Sometimes there's something in our mind that interferes with clear thinking. Sleep cleans that something, that could be simply trying too hard.
- __david__ 12y agoOh me too. I've often the real smart person in my life was my subconscious. Like you said though, the downside is there is no progress reporting and it can take a really long time. But I would say many of the slick solutions to programming problems have come from my subconscious, either after sleeping or just taking a break and eating some food or something.
- bostonpete 12y ago> I've often the real smart person in my life was my subconscious. I think you accidentally a word. Your subconscious must not have written that sentence... :-)
- __david__ 12y agoOr my silly new phone keyboard I was testing :-). But yes, "I've often thought" or "I've often felt" is probably what I meant.
- snippyhollow 12y agoThomas is a labmate of mine, fire away if you have specific questions, either I can answer them, or ask him!
- malka 12y agoCould this be linked to the Tetris effect[0] ? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
- edw519 12y agoI discovered this by accident years ago, and now "sleeping on it" is absolutely essential to my making progress, in fact it's probably my most important work hack. I started off by decoupling programming from analysis, doing each at a different time in a different place. This led to doing analysis at bed time. I may not have figured things out that night, but invariably, elegant solutions "came to me" in the next day or two. I have talked about this many times here. My earliest comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191275
- rubiquity 12y agoRich Hickey's Hammock Driven-Development[0] talk is a good talk about how getting away from the computer, and sometimes even sleeping, can be the best way to solve technical problems. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
- leoedin 12y agoThere's been a few times in my life when I've heard a sound while sleeping that my brain decided "wasn't right" and woke me up. Often the sound is very quiet - perhaps a mouse in my bedroom or an event outside the house. Generally there's a very bizarre process where I'll sort of wake up and then "hear" the sound, allowing me to process it consciously. It's obvious that I wasn't awake when the sound happened, but that there's some sort of constantly running sound-comparator listening to the world and triggering alerts when something that isn't easily matched to the known is heard. The similarities with FPGAs/ASICs are really quite interesting.
- Someone1234 12y agoLight too. A DirecTv box with super-bright blue LEDs (don't get me started) decided to turn itself on randomly in the middle of the night, and that definitely woke me up from a deep sleep (maybe my brain thought it was a fire?). Now, granted, we do fall in and out of stages of deep and less-deep sleep throughout the night, however in my experience I have definitely been woken out of deep sleep by an usual sound or light (although it seems like it takes less from a less-deep sleep to wake you).
- vidarh 12y ago> super-bright blue LEDs (don't get me started) I bought a package of 400 small black sticky "dots" for the sole purpose of conquering bright blue leds... (Search for "sticky dots" on Amazon)
- dpatrick86 12y agoThank you!!!!!! Grrrrrr..... Nail polish failed me miserably.
- cordite 12y agoOften when I'm pushing myself by staying up and reading something interesting, I'll start hallucinating sounds. Often electrical or crashing, or other non-vocal sources. I wonder if it is an attempt to keep me awake, or if it is some sort of partial dreaming.
- Chris_O_75 12y agoMy brain needs to decide to keep sleeping, and help me out with my damn insomnia.
- bambax 12y agoI sometimes stay conscious while asleep. The first time it happened I thought I was dead, because I felt completely conscious but could not control my body nor receive input from my senses. I kind of panicked, and with what felt like an extreme effort was able to become fully awake. Since then it happens from time to time (I can't make it happen) and it's a very pleasant experience since you're in a dreamy state where you can pretty much decide what you dream about. It's a state that is between awake and asleep; when in that state, it's very easy to fall into actual sleep (to lose consciousness), and very difficult (but possible) to awaken completely. I keep good memory of the experience each time. I would like to talk about it with people who experienced the same thing, but could never find anyone just by talking about it to friends around me. Where should I look? Does this thing have a name?
- amwelles 12y agoThat sounds a lot like sleep paralysis, which I've experienced while trying to induce lucid dreaming.
- schandur 12y agoYeah, I agree - I have had a similar experience a couple of times (the very first time freaked me out as it was kind of an out-of-body experience).
- maskedinvader 12y agoI had a friend who described this exact same thing, I obviously thought he was making it up, since I don't remember 99% of my dreams and experience dreamless nights most of the time. I know about REM state and how everyone dreams, so I know I dream but simply don't remember anything, only thing I can sort of pick up from the dream is whether it was a happy one or a unhappy one. I guess this thing you describe must have a name, can't be a coincidence.
- alfaiate 12y agoI suggest exploring the subreddit dedicated to Lucid Dreams [1]. Falling asleep while somewhat conscious is a very interesting experience and this even has a name, Wake-Induced Lucid Dream (WILDE). [1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/ http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/
- olalonde 12y agoAnecdote: I once came up with a joke in my dream and laughed so hard at it that it woke me up (and my girlfriend). I also sometimes speak in English in my dreams although it's not my native language. There's also several stories of famous writers and scientists who had their "haha" moments while sleeping (James Cameron claims the idea behind Terminator came in a dream).
- tim_jones 12y agoVery interesting article. Why do I only dream in the morning?
- anoncow 12y agoAs you get more rest, REM cycles increase. We recall the dreams we see in REM.
- virmundi 12y agoI'm presently reading a book called Psycho-Cybernetics. It's rather old. I got it for free from an estate sale. Looked interesting because it has Psycho and Cybernetics in it; where could I go wrong?! The main thesis is that the subconscious is a machine for doing things. Like a machine, it only reacts to data. It makes no judgement calls on the data. The goal of a person is to use their conscious mind to filter the information the doing machine gets. It was one of the first cognitive behavioral therapy books. The book advocates sleeping on it for the reason given. The mind will process the data and come to a conclusion. The trick is to managing the data to get a good conclusion.
- atom-morgan 12y agoHas anyone here spent any time in a sensory deprivation tank? After going in one myself, the conclusion here makes a lot of sense. While you're floating, you don't feel like you're actively processing everything that's going on around you as you do in a normal environment where all senses are available to you. While floating, it feels like you're spectating your mind as it processes things. So when you shut off all your senses and let go, you enter this observation mode where information is being processed but it doesn't feel like you are doing it. It seems like the same thing is happening while we sleep only we're not as lucid. I'm interested to see if others have had similar experiences.
- beachstartup 12y agothis is basically what meditation is. some just observe, others try to hush the thoughts.
- bentcorner 12y agoIn (I think) a slightly related topic, I sometimes listen to white noise when sleeping on the bus. I've noticed that I'll hear voices as I drift off to sleep - they sort of coalesce from the static and as I start focusing on the voices they disappear. I think it's my brain trying to make sense of the input, and as I start going to sleep the "reigns go free". Sort of eerie. (No, I don't hear voices when I'm not listening to white noise).
- hrjet 12y agoThis happens to me with the sound of running water even when I am fully awake, especially when I am expecting an important sound. For example, if I am in the shower and expecting an important call on the phone, I often get a feeling that the phone is ringing. But it's just my brain trying to be super alert and picking up noise as signals. If I turn off the water, the sounds go off.
- sprucely 12y agoI think that is hypnagogia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia. And it doesn't necessarily require environmental noise to be triggered. There's a lot of material out there on it being linked to lucid dreaming.
- 123testaccount 12y agoYears ago, for a period of about 3 months, 2 friends and I would get together after work and play an XBOX fighting game for 4-5 hours (We had literally nothing else to do. No money, no cable, just this one game). Winner plays again and loser waits his turn. Everyone's style and character picks would constantly evolve during this process. But generally, one friend would lose far more than he would win, and we would tease him mercilessly, as you do. One day, out of nowhere, he was unbeatable. Winning game after game, to all of our amazement. My other friend, who I don't think graduated high school and almost certainly never read anything about sleep science or brain development, made the following comment, which struck me as profound at the time: "JP was dreaming this shit last light. No doubt, dreaming it all night" Another example of sub/unconscious learning happens in sports. Another pastime of mine is playing pickup basketball. One of the best ways to get into a hot shooters head is to simply say "You're shooting really well today. What are you doing differently?" the same applies to things like a golf swing.
- jessmoure 12y agovery interesting.. Napoleon Hill once said that he came up with the title of his global best seller "Think and Grow Rich" while he was asleep.
- ExpiredLink 12y agoI hope my brain tells me about its decision after I awake.
- dang 12y agoThis is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306849.