Friday, June 4, 2010
Introduction @ 2:13 AM
Hello people,

Welcome to Password-The System blog. This blog is a compilation of my work and research , feel free to read and comment on (and maybe provide some personal experiences) the informations on this blog. Also it will be appreciated if you will participate in the surveys found on the link in the blog. The research/ studies/ thesis will be compiled into a book titled Password - The System. Your participation in helping me compile this book is appreciated. Please take note that the material from this blog are protected by copyrights, either by myself or authors of the original text. And if you spot any mistakes feel free to comment on it. (=

Regards,
Raymond Yeh

P.S: Feel free to access my other blog which i used to keep track of some of my academic materials. It should be useful for students at the JC level.

Updates:
4/6/10 - Completed topic on using Sleep Programming for Effective Learning.
4/6/10 - Added CBox, and linked to study blog.
4/6/10 - Started brainstorming on Law of Attraction.
Chapter 1: Introduction to Sleep @ 2:08 AM
[Sleep is] the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Thomas Dekker (1572-1623)

Why do we sleep? What exactly is happening when we are asleep? What is quality sleep? This chapter provides an introduction to the basic mechanics of sleep. The following chapter, Chapter 2: Hijacking Sleep, discusses about how we can harness the power of sleep to help us in learning.

Our minds exhibit certain brain waves all the time. These waves are produced by neurons activities in our brain and can be measured by electrodes attached to the scalp. This process is known as electroencephalography (EEG). The EEG reading can be used to determine the current state of mind of the subject. Below is an example of how an EEG reading looks like.


Diagram 1.1 EEG graph

You do not have to understand diagram. To put it simply, when we are alert and processing much information, our brainwave are more intense and when we are drowsy and switching off, our brainwave are less intense. When we are asleep, our brainwave patterns can be classified into 5 different stages by convention. Our brains transit from one stage to another frequently throughout our entire sleep cycle.

Below is a graph showing the state of sleep a typical person is in (in 8 hours of night's sleep). It may different from person to person.


Diagram 1.2 Typical sleep cycle pattern

This graph give us an idea of which stage of sleep are we at, given elapsed time into our sleep. By comparing the level of sleep we are in at a given time and the characteristic of the different stages of sleep, we can then understand the activities going on in our body and mind at the given time.

Below is a brief description of the characteristic of each of the stages of our sleep.

Stage 1: Drowsiness
Remember the feeling when you are switching off (and dreaming of your lala land) during lectures? This is the state of your mind you exhibit when we drift off into an altered state. At this stage, our brain exhibit slightly lower brainwaves called alpha brainwaves. We are awake at this stage but we exhibit several characteristics of sleep such as relaxed muscles, slow movement of eyes under the eyelids, and lower body temperatures, heart rate, and respiration rate. This stage would usually last 5 - 10 minutes before we enter a deeper stage of sleep.

Stage 2: Light Sleep
This stage is largely similar to that of stage 1, we are still easily woken up at this stage; subjects woken up at this stage may still claim that they were still awake. Here, our brains experience sudden bursts of brain activities and our brains exhibit K-Complexes brainwave patterns. This stage is characterised by further dip in body temperature and heart rate, however, eyes movement under eyelids cease.

Stage 3-4: Deep Sleep
At stage 3-4, our brainwaves reach their lowest frequency, exhibiting brainwaves alternating between the delta and theta brainwave patterns. At this stage, subjects are difficult to be awakened, and they may feel slightly disoriented up to several minutes should they be awakened. Here, the body restores energy and repairs itself. Blood flow to the brain is minimal while it is redirected to muscles, restoring physical energy and repairing damages. Research also shows that our body immune system also increases during deep sleep. This stage is characterised by the lowest point of body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration.

Stage 5: Rapid Eye Movement (REM)
Dreams occur during REM and we have 3-5 REM cycles every night on average, lasting of 1.5 to 2 hours in a night’s sleep. During REM, our brains exhibit similar brainwave pattern of that in our waking state, thus there is no one specific brainwave pattern of one in REM sleep. The functions of REM sleep will be discussed in further details later.

From the graph, we can see that the first half of the sleep cycle is effectively deep sleep, suggesting that the body is repairing itself. The second half of the cycle is mostly REM sleep and the importance of this segment of the sleep cycle will be discussed in greater details in Chapter 2: Hijacking Sleep.
Chapter 2: Hijacking Sleep @ 2:06 AM
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
(William Dement)

The previous chapter gave us a brief overview of our sleep patterns and introduced the various functions of the different stages of sleep. Here, we will focus on the functions of REM sleep and learn how can we use it as a tool for learning. This knowledge is a valuable tool which I have been using throughout the course of my academic life. By learning how to exploit it, we can learn how to make learning more effective and efficient.

REM sleep has intrigued scientists of what it actually does. However, there is a common consensus among them, that is, REM sleep is essential to learning.

Humans learn by recognising patterns and repeating. Another important aspect of effective learning is speed. The brain is designed to recognise pattern and the patterns have to be presented rapidly enough for human to perceive the pattern. This concept can be easily illustrated by flipbooks. We can only see the animated picture of the stick figures at the corner of the book if we flip fast enough. To sum it up, speed, repetition and ability to recognise patterns are the essentials for effective learning.

How then can sleeping help us in learning? REM sleep is the way the unconscious mind process the experiences during our waking states at a neurological level. It is a way the mind programs and reprograms itself, and practising skills we learnt during the waking state repetitively to engrave the experience in our brains. Furthermore, dreaming allow us to perceive time differently. Our dream may seem to last several hours maybe even days but in reality we are only dreaming for a couple of minutes every night. Our mind is capable of expanding and contracting time! Imagine how wonderful will it be if we are able to utilise these ‘excess’ time. Does finishing revision on half the syllabus of a subject in 5 minutes interest you?

Before we get to the method of programming our brain to do what we want it to, we shall try an experiment:

Just before you sleep tonight, look at the clock, and tell yourself in an affirmative voice that you are going to wake up at a specific time the next day. Set the alarm if you want, but you will still wake at the specific time you are going to wake up anyway. Instead of speaking to yourself, you may also use alternative to reaffirm the waking time like tapping on your forehead the number of hours you will be sleeping for.

This experiment shows that our brains are highly programmable. That is, we can easily program them to do certain task such as keeping. If our brain can be programmed to wake us up, it can then be programmed to do certain work while we are asleep.

Given that our brain process ‘rubbish’ if we do not give it instruction to what it should be processing, how then do we program our brain to help us learn? You may have guessed it by now that all we need to do before we sleep is to give specific instruction of what you want your brain to do during the period of sleep. A couple of minutes before you sleep everyday, list down some of the things you want to do when you sleep, it can be revision of some subjects, practicing of piano, making of a decision or develop new ideas.

Now that you have learnt how to program your mind to do work while you sleep, you may have wondered how we can access to the ‘product’ of our sleep. The answer is: “you cannot”. I’m not joking here, nor taking you for a ride. You cannot directly see the results mainly because you forget you dreams. However, the skills and concepts are stored at the neurological level of your brain. Your subconscious mind is like a black box (in scientific term), you can see what information goes in and what comes out, but you have no idea of how information in processed in it. What you did while you were asleep was to rewire the ‘black box’ so that it can process information more efficiently and accurately when you were awake.


Diagram 2.1 Black box analogy

All that you need to do to complete the learning process is to practice what you have programmed your mind to do a few more time. It will feel easier, as if you have done it many times before, and you get the results you want more easily simply because your mind is already pre-programmed to attain the results.

I have come to the end of the topic on how we can use sleep for learning. I thank you for reading and those who supported me to write this article.