The goal of this project was to create an app that could be used to aid study and learning while the user sleeps. Most people sleep for at least 6 or 7 hours a night, and if even a small amount of that time could be harnessed or optimised the gains could be extraordinary. There are a multitude of "Learn while you sleep" tapes, cd's and apps out there, but they all share a fundamental problem: They don't work.

All of the versions that I have seen rely on audio recordings of material to be learned, such as vocabulary for a foreign language, facts and figures, or motivational speeches or self-development courses. However, research has shown time and time again that the human brain is incapable of processing verbal cues while it is asleep, so at best, these recordings do nothing, at worst, they actually reduce the quality of your sleep and therefore your concentration and recall abilities. The human brain seemingly cannot use sleep to learn new memories.

Research has indicated however that classical conditioning (associating one thing with another, for example, after burning oneself with a candle, one might associate all candles with being burned) does occur during sleep. My idea was to create an app that randomly generates a simple melody, and plays it on continuous repeat (obviously at a low volume) while the user studies a piece of material. Later, during sleep, they can schedule the app to play the same melody, again on repeat. The idea is that this melody will have become associated with the material being learned, and when it is played back at night, it will reinforce and strengthen the persons memories of this material, allowing them to learn much faster.

Obviously, it will take several study sessions for the brain to associate the melody with the study material, and even then the brain will not technically be "learning" new information while it sleeps, it will just be reinforcing material already learned. Even so, this technique could make a significant difference in the learning process, and speed up learning.

This article from LiveScience.com discusses this subject. To quote from the article:

"As long as the memory is tied to a specific type of sound, it looks like the sound can re-activate and strengthen the previously learned information," Reber told Life's Little Mysteries. "It is possible this effect would help with strengthening memories from a classroom or lecture and that it could even help speed up second-language learning."

The app that I wrote is functionally complete, but needs some debugging before it can be uploaded to the Play Store. I will post a link to it when it is done. For now, here are some screens of the basic menus: