{"id":1367,"date":"2014-05-04T15:30:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T19:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2017-06-27T15:29:31","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T19:29:31","slug":"can-you-sleep-your-way-to-becoming-mozart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/04\/can-you-sleep-your-way-to-becoming-mozart\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you Sleep Your Way to Becoming Mozart?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unknown\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Musicians are credited with an acute ability to memorize lengthy pieces of music and then reproduce them with grace and beauty.\u00a0 But how do they do it? How do they remember every single note and every single rest so perfectly?\u00a0 Many studies in the past have investigated the role of memory in learning.\u00a0 They have shown that, even after practice and rehearsal, memory does not stop consolidating, even if we are not consciously aware of this happening.\u00a0 Consolidation is the process in which the brain gathers all the information you are practicing or rehearsing, packs it together, and sends it to the long-term memory.\u00a0 This means that even after we stop actively trying to practice something, our brains keep on working to rehearse the information and store it in our memory for the long haul. Research has found that memory consolidation usually happens on larger scales during sleep.\u00a0 However, many studies have also found that a factor that interferes with memory consolidation is learning multiple novel tasks.\u00a0 Interference is where one process you engage in disrupts the consolidation of another process.\u00a0 For example, you may learn how to drive a boat, but then have to learn how to drive a car, but the instructions you received when learning to drive a boat may get in the way of you learning new rules for driving a car.\u00a0 Interference is a big problem for consolidation because it confuses your brain so that it doesn\u2019t know which information to retain in its memory vault. Researchers found that learning a second novel task after a previous one would interfere with the consolidation of the original task, even after sleep<\/i>. Allen\u2019s study investigated to what extent sleep had an effect on the consolidation of memory for a target, musical task, if two other tasks were also learned in the same training session.<\/p>\n

Allen recruited 60 music majors from The University of Texas at Austin.\u00a0 All the students were at the same skill level, they all had no more than two years of undergraduate piano lessons, and no more than three years of private piano lessons.\u00a0 Allen had four experimental groups to see how learning a second melody would affect the memory for the first, target task.\u00a0 \u00a0The first group only practiced the target melody A, and then returned the next day for a brief test on that melody.\u00a0This group was important because it wanted to test the effect of memory consolidation without any interference of another melody. \u00a0The second group practiced melody A and then a second melody B in the session, and then returned the next morning to be tested on melody A.\u00a0 This group was important because it wanted to test the effect of interference before<\/i> a night\u2019s sleep and see if it had any impact on memory consolidation.\u00a0 The third group practiced melody A and melody B and were tested on melody A at the end of the session, and then again the next morning.\u00a0 This group was important because it wanted to see the effect of retesting melody A, before sleep, on memory consolidation and see if it had any impact on interference and how the participant performed on the morning test. The fourth group practiced melody A, then returned the next morning and learned melody B before being tested on melody A.\u00a0 This group was also important because it really looked at the effect of interference the day after<\/i> sleep to see if it had an effect on memory.<\/p>\n

In the experiment, Allen had the participants come in to the studio for the evening session, and practice the melodies with their non-dominant hand for 12-30 second blocks.\u00a0 They were asked to play the melodies as quickly and accurately as possible.\u00a0 They then were told to get a good night\u2019s sleep and avoid playing a musical instrument until the next morning when they returned for the morning testing session.<\/p>\n

The results showed that the first group displayed significant improvement in their performance when tested on only melody A the morning after.\u00a0 This finding is important because it shows that without learning any interfering melodies, the participants could remember melody A very well. \u00a0 The second group showed no improvement in their performance when comparing their morning test on melody A to the end of the previous day\u2019s training session. \u00a0This finding is important because it shows that with direct interference from the night before (ending the session learning melody B), they could not perform as well on their test the next morning.\u00a0The third group showed significant improvement in their performance when comparing their morning test to the end of the night session. These results showed that by testing melody A again briefly at the end of the session after learning melody B, the supposed interfering effects of melody B that would show up during sleep, never actually did interfere with the testing of melody A.\u00a0 This finding was important because it showed that even after learning another melody, the interfering effects could be subdued and lead to similar effects as the first control group. The fourth group had no improvements in their performance the next day, because by learning melody B right before they were tested on melody A, the memory of melody A was obscured so that none of the effects of sleep consolidation occurred.<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s study shows us that sleeping does, in fact, have an impact on memory consolidation.\u00a0 Sleeping helps us store our memories and motor skills. The participants that only studied melody A and were tested in the morning, did significantly better than those that learned both melodies and were tested in the morning.\u00a0 However, this study does also show us that\u00a0when\u00a0<\/i>you learn something also has a big impact on whether or not you remember it.\u00a0 Those that learned melody B the night before didn\u2019t show any interference when tested on melody A the next morning, but those who learned melody B in the morning, did significantly worse on the test.\u00a0 So, the next time you are thinking of pulling an all-nighter to study for a test or concert, go to sleep instead, and then practice again in the morning.\u00a0 Just practice until bedtime and then snuggle up under the covers and let your brain go to work!<\/p>\n

\"Unknown-1\"<\/p>\n

To read the original paper click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Allen, S. E. “Memory Stabilization and Enhancement following Music Practice.” Psychology of Music<\/i> 41.6 (2013): 794-803.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musicians are credited with an acute ability to memorize lengthy pieces of music and then reproduce them with grace and beauty.\u00a0 But how do they do it? How do they remember every single note and every single rest so perfectly?\u00a0 Many studies in the past have investigated the role of memory in learning.\u00a0 They have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80215],"tags":[45,542],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5032"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}