The ‘ shift night ’ brain.

The ‘ shift night ’ brain.

research published in the scientific journal “ Cognition ”.

-A researcher of the Basque Centre BCBL shows that the brain during sleep improves language skills and assimilates the learned words

-the Belgian researcher Nicolas Dumay research has been published in the prestigious scientific journal Cognitionspecialized in the study of the brain

-Dumay ensures that the brain more easily assimilated words learned during the night, before going to sleep

San Sebastian, April 2012.- what role plays the brain while you sleep? This is a question that still lacks a complete answer. However, recent research of Nicolas Dumay, Belgian researcher of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), has shown that sleep contributes to fix the knowledge gained during the day in the brain.

The research of Dumay, which has been published in the prestigious scientific journal Cognition, specializing in the study of the brain, proved that during the hours of sleep the brain reviews the words learned during the day, improves language skills and sets the learned words.

Scientist BCBL, which carried out the pilot at York University in the United Kingdom phase but has developed its conclusions in the BCBL has used the learning of new words to test their hypothesis on the brain during sleep activity.

According to Dumay, who developed the experiment with English vocabulary, “ words struggling including access to the memory in our brain ”, and this experiment shows that “ only after sleeping words newly learned achieved the status of assimilated Word ”.

The experiment

The researcher of the BCBL showed 36 words new, unknown, 32 people, with the particularity that each new Word included in its composition a recognizable shorter Word for persons involved in the experiment.

One of those words was “ numesstac ”. This word, which does not mean anything in English, has in its composition the word “ mess ”, a very common English word meaning disaster or disorder.

Five minutes after listening to 36 words like this, Dumay participants asked two questions. The first, if they remembered the new words such as “ numesstac ”. The second, if any other word they recognized in its composition to listen to each word as “ mess ”. After measuring reaction times, Dumay concluded that participants remembered a 7% of new words and recognize the embedded words quickly.

The researcher of the BCBL repeated the experiment 24 hours later, i.e., once the participants had fallen asleep, and found that the rate of memory of new words as “ numesstac ” rose to 12 per cent. But the most significant conclusion was that people were much slower in the task of recognition of the words which already knew, as “ mess ”, which were buried in the proposed words.

Nicolas Dumay, the BCBL researcher, has shown that a person’s brain assimilates and fixed knowledge while you sleep.

Dumay, this slowness in recognition of the already known words owes, according to that during sleep in the experiment participants assimilated the new words. I.e. during sleep “ numesstac ” ceased to be a new Word to become assimilated short, which made it difficult for the recognition of the word “ mess ”.

Based on this conclusion and other previous studies on sleep and the brain, Dumay ensures that the brain more easily assimilated words learned during the night, before sleep, that during the day the brain has many other stimuli that interfere with the words learned in the morning.

In addition to this experiment, Dumay has carried out several research related to learning, Linguistics and brain. Some of his conclusions are being implemented for the development of new techniques of teaching of foreign languages

on the BCBL

the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) is an International Centre for interdisciplinary research based in San Sebastián for the study of cognition, brain and language promoted by the Basque Government to promote science and research in the Basque country. The Centre, which is counted among the BERC (Basque Excellence Research Center), has among its partners Ikerbasque, Innobasque, the provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the University of the Basque country.