Brace yourselves, lovers of sleep and dreams: scientific research has just dropped a bomb on our way of seeing the dream world. Sleeping is no longer a "do not disturb" for the brain, on the contrary. A team of French scientists has discovered that while sleeping, people can communicate with the outside world by both "listening" and "speaking".
And no, it is not an episode of "Black Mirror", but research published in Nature Neuroscience (that I link to you here).
Sleep: a mosaic of conscious and unconscious moments
Until recently, sleep was considered a time of total disconnection from the outside world. This new research, led by Lionel Naccache of Pitié-Salpêtrière University in France, everything is changing. His team discovered that sleep and wakefulness are not stable states: far from it.
To conduct the study, researchers recruited 22 people without sleep disorders and 27 patients with narcolepsy. The latter is a condition in which patients experience uncontrollable episodes of daytime sleepiness. Narcolepsy is also associated with lucid dreams, making these patients (obviously while sleeping) ideal candidates for studying consciousness during sleep.
Words and reactions: the sleep test
During the experiment, participants were asked to take a nap while a voice recorder spoke a series of real and made-up words. They had to react by smiling or frowning to categorize the words, while data such as brain and heart activity were recorded. Surprisingly, most of the sleeping participants answered correctly.
By analyzing the data, scientists discovered that “connection windows” exist during sleep. These are times when the brain is particularly receptive to external stimuli. Imagine the possibilities: We could one day use these windows to facilitate learning or improve the quality of sleep.
Those “awake” while they sleep
This research opens new avenues for understanding the brain and sleep. It could also lead to the development of new protocols for communicating with sleeping individuals, improving our understanding of how mental activity changes during sleep. What if we could one day send messages to dreamers to help them solve problems or even learn new skills (or sell him something)?
We'll see. In any case, discoveries like these suggest that sleep is no longer that silent barrier that separates us from the outside world. Rather, it is an uncharted territory of possibilities and connections, a new boundary that science has only begun to map.
