Practice While You Sleep

How many times have you walked up to another person and began to have a conversation, only to realize that you were talking to yourself because they had headphones in their ears? Walking around a college campus, or anywhere in a metropolitan area like Chicago, you quickly realize that it seems like we as a society have become addicted to music. From walking around the city, to running to class, working out, doing homework, or hanging out with friends, music has become an extremely integrated part of our culture. We often use music as a talking point when meeting new people, where similar taste in artists or genres can lead to a blossoming conversation or disagreement can lead to an awkward end to a short encounter.

 

Having played piano for fourteen years, those beginning few years have become somewhat blurry; however, many of the pains and headaches still resonate. Learning an instrument is simply not easy regardless of your age. There are no perfect shortcuts or helpful tricks to make understanding an instrument just “click.” As Gary Marcus illustrates throughout his novel Guitar Zero, learning an instrument is an ongoing pursuit, similar to learning a new language. In order to become as fluent as possible in a given language it is almost essential that you fully immerse yourself in the culture. Similarly, in order to gain even a moderate understanding of an instrument it is essential to fully commit both time and effort to overcoming the frustration that is sure to accompany the initial steps to playing music. Although the initial frustration can be difficult to overcome, the payout once you have succeeded is indescribably worth it. I completely agree when Marcus states that playing music has brought balance to his life and in my own personal life music has provided me with that essential escape from days with seemingly endless checklists.

What if there was a way to make the painful right of passage of learning an instrument a little easier? Furthermore, what if the mechanism to make learning music easier might be extended to making learning or memorizing anything easier? A new study from Northwestern University suggests that the idea that listening to something while you sleep could actually prove beneficial to retention. The study suggests that memories can be reactivated during sleep and, as a result, can be more effectively stored in the brain. Ken Paller, the primary author of the study, had participants play two artificially generated musical tunes in a format similar to Guitar Hero. The participants then took a 90-minute nap and while they were sleeping they were presented with one of the tunes they had practiced earlier. Through the use of electroencephalography (EEG) the researchers made sure that the reinforcement of one song was presented during slow wave sleep, a stage of sleep, which in previous research has been seen to be linked to cementing memories. After waking up the participants showed fewer errors when playing the song that they were presented with while they were sleeping in comparison with the song that they were not presented with while sleeping.

Furthermore, the researchers found that electrophysiological signals during sleep were directly correlated with how much the memory was improved after being reinforced during sleep. Paller and his associates wanted to clearly separate their findings from the old myth that you can learn something by playing a recorded tape while sleeping. In Paller’s study, the data is showing a strengthening in memories for something that has already been learned, not something that is new to the individual. It is not about learning something new while you sleep, but enhancing the information, which has already been learned. Paller states that in the future he hopes to examine the effects of sleep reinforcement on other things, such as learning a new language.

The potential impact of reinforcement during sleep is incredible not only in learning music, but in any form of learning and memorization. Although there is no perfect shortcut around the old fashioned adage “practice makes perfect,” there is some potential for decreasing the severity of the learning curve when trying to acquire a new skill. 

Works Cited:

Northwestern University. "Learn that tune while fast asleep: Stimulation during sleep can enhance skill learning." Science Daily, 24 Jun. 2012. Web. 8 Oct. 2012.  

Marcus, Gary F. Guitar zero: The new musician and the science of learning. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.