Although I can casually pepper my speech with common conversational phrases in other languages (bien sur!) I’ve never actually become fluent in any language but English. Yes, I’m interested. Yes, I’ve tried Duolingo. And yes, I have taken classes. But none of my feeble attempts have helped another language take hold in my brain. So, when I heard murmurs about the potential of learning another language in my sleep, I was immediately curious. It sounds far-fetched — but could it be possible?
First of all, many of us assume that the brain just sort of shuts off or plays reruns during sleep. That’s not exactly the case, although it does process memories (which could be compared to reruns) while we sleep. When we’re in deep sleep — also called Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) — the brain goes through the memory traces that were created during wakefulness and strengthens the important ones, while unimportant ones are weakened or deleted to make room for new learning the next day, explains Marc Züst, a professor of psychology at the University of Bern in Switzerland, who studies sleep and learning.
