How your brain actually makes decisions

while you sleep

By Thomas Andrillon September 17 at 12:31 P
Thomas Andrillon is a Ph! Student at "cole #ormale
Sup$rieure de Paris%
An illustration o& awake and asleep% '(ourtesy o& ichael Halassa) %!%) Ph!
The idea that during
sleep our minds shut down from the outside world is ancient and one that is still
deeply anchored in our view of sleep today, despite some everyday life experiences and
recent scientific discoveries that would tend to prove that our brains dont completely
switch off from our environment.
On the contrary, our brains can keep the gate slightly open. For example, we wake up
more easily when we hear our own name or a particularly salient sound such as an
alarm clock or a fire alarm compared to equally loud but less relevant sounds.
n research published in !urrent "iology, we went one step further to show that
complex stimuli can not only be processed while we sleep but that this information can
be used to make decisions, similarly as when were awake.
Our approach was simple# $e built on knowledge about how the brain
quickly automates complex chores. %riving a car, for example, requires integrating a
lot of information at the same time, making rapid decisions and putting them into
action through complex motor sequences. &nd you can drive all the way home without
remembering anything, as we do when we say were on 'automatic pilot.(
$hen were asleep, the brain regions critical for paying attention to or implementing
instructions are deactivated, of course, which makes it impossible to start performing a
task. "ut we wanted to see whether any processes continued in the brain after sleep
onset if participants in an experiment were given an automati)ed task *ust before.
To do this, we carried out experiments in which we got participants to categori)e
spoken words that were separated into two categories# words that referred to animals
or ob*ects + for example 'cat( or 'hat,( in a first experiment, then real words like
'hammer( vs. pseudo-words .words that can be pronounced but are found nowhere in
the dictionary/ like 'fabu( in a second one.
0articipants were asked to indicate the category of the word that they heard by
pressing a left or right button. Once the task became more automatic, we asked them
to continue to respond to the words, but they were also allowed to fall asleep. 1ince
they were lying down in a dark room, most of them fell asleep while words were being
played.
&t the same time we monitored their state of vigilance thanks to 223 electrodes placed
on their head. Once they were asleep, and without disturbing the flow of words they
were hearing, we gave our participants new items from the same categories. The idea
here was to force them to extract the meaning of the word .in the first experiment/ or
to check whether a word was part of the lexicon .in the second experiment/ in order to
be able to respond.
Of course, when asleep, participants stopped pressing buttons. 1o in order to check
whether their brains were still responding to the words, we looked at the activity in the
motor areas of the brain. 0lanning to press a button on your left involves your right
hemisphere and vice-versa. "y looking at the laterali)ation of brain activity in motor
areas, it is possible to see whether someone is preparing a response and toward which
side. &pplying this method to our sleepers allowed us to show that even during sleep,
their brains continued to routinely prepare for right and left responses according to the
meaning of the words they were hearing.
2ven more interesting, 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. 1o not only did they process
complex information while being completely asleep, but they did it unconsciously. Our
work sheds new light about the brains ability to process information while asleep but
also while being unconscious.
This study is *ust the beginning. mportant questions have yet to be answered. f we
are able to prepare for actions during sleep, why is it that we do not perform them4
$hat kind of processing can or cannot be achieved by the sleeping brain4 !an
sentences or series of sentences be processed4 $hat happens when we dream4 $ould
these sounds be incorporated into the dream scenery4
"ut most importantly, our work revives that age-old fantasy of learning during our
sleep. t is well known that sleep is important to consolidate previously learned
information or that some basic form of learning like conditioning can take place while
we are asleep. "ut can more complex forms of learning take place and what would be
the cost in terms of what sacrifices the brain would make to do this4
1leep is important for the brain and total sleep deprivation leads to deathafter about
two to four weeks. ndeed, it should be borne in mind that sleep is a crucial
phenomenon and universal to all animals. $e proved here that sleep is not an all-or-
none state, not that forcing our brain to learn and do things during the night would be
ultimately beneficial in the long run.
0osted by Thavam