Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR) → Targeted Lucidity Reactivation

20:48That's where we get into something called targeted memory reactivation. Okay. Okay. This is something that's used not just in dream research, but just sleep research in general. >> Okay, >> here's the idea. Okay, so we pair learning. Let's say we're awake and we're learning something. We pair that learning with some kind of sensory signal. Usually, it's a sound. So, I'm reading something. I'm playing the piano. There's a sound that's playing. Okay. Now, when we go and sleep, that same sound is going to play while we sleep. >> Okay. And then later on when we wake up because that sound is associated with

21:29the thing that we were learning and now we heard it while we slept it's going to sort of give that extra oomph to consolidate that into the greater brain machinery. >> Does that make sense? >> It it it does. It's it's a signal that sort of triggers uh hardening of the concept from your waking state in your sleeping state. Exactly. Yeah. There's this external stimulus that's associated with the thing that you're trying to learn, either the task that you're trying to learn or the memory that you're trying to remember. And then when you trigger it during your sleep, it like doubles down. The neurons double down because there's they're getting a

22:10coincidence signal. >> Mhm. >> You know, >> I wish I knew this when we were in school, >> dude. [laughter] I mean, there's there's a lot of cool research now that's doing this exactly right now. Historically, this TMR targeted memory reactivation has focused on non-REM sleep. Okay, nonREM sleep is the slowwave sleep that we get. That's the deep sleep. And that is usually involved in memory consolidation. That's the idea of whatever short-term memory that I'm getting today. >> Whatever is salient and I need to store into long-term memory, that's what happens during this deep sleep. And so if I want to store certain things into long-term memory, what I can do is um or if I want to like have a skill that I really want to store into long-term

22:50memory, I can have this targeted memory reactivation and it's actually highly effective. In 90 plus studies, this particular one by um Rash and other authors have shown that this is like very much >> works. Okay, >> like those those who learn piano for example with an auditory stimulus and then you reactivate the auditory stimulus during sleep, they're going to remember that piano sequence better. Like their motor neurons literally are going to be better the next day. >> So for all the coaches who used to say don't play music while we were training Yeah. >> for soccer. Uh have it be known that had you let us play our rap music and then we played it during our sleep. during

23:31our sleep during during the sleep we would have we would have won more [laughter] games. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the big one, right? >> I'm being facitious a little bit here. >> Yeah. Um and so here in this particular study, what they're trying to do is break that barrier and not just go into non-REM sleep. They're trying to do targeted memory reactivation during dreaming. >> Okay. >> It gets a little tricky. >> Okay. >> Okay. When we get into dreaming, right? Because what we want to do is we want to prove that the targeted memory reactivation during dreaming can bias dream content. >> Oh, okay. >> Right. So that's one thing where like you're going to dream of certain things.

24:13And then the second thing is when you dream of those certain things, you're actually better at the task >> later on. >> Interesting. So we're not just trying to harden it so that it can be reactivated when there's an external stimulus. That was just a grounding. What we're saying now is can we actually influence what someone sees and feels when they are actively dreaming? >> Yeah. And then not only that, can we then also have it so that the thing we're influencing them to see and feel while they are dreaming is functionally beneficial to like a reactivation or some functional process for when they're now returning to the waking state.

24:53>> Yes, exactly. And in order to really make this foolproof, they actually selected their participants, >> okay, >> to be 20 subjects with high lucid dreaming, >> okay, >> propensity. Yeah. >> Do you know about lucid dreaming? >> I I am from We do live in LA. So, you know, there's a lot of people who love to talk about the woo woo. >> Yeah. >> Uh and lucid dreaming is very >> it's the the idea basically that you can have agency like you have awareness during dreams. >> During dreams and then you can make decisions, not just be on a roller coaster ride through. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's I think it's one of the coolest things that we can do as human beings is be conscious of the fact that we are in our brains simulation.

25:33Yep. >> Right. and then have agency and control over that dream. Right? This is central to the plot point of inception and so on and so forth, right? So, um here's what they did. >> They got 20 subjects with really high lucid dreaming propensity. Okay? 39 overnight sessions. And what these participants did was they tried to solve tasks like little puzzles. This is like a match stick puzzle which is like you you you you want to move exactly five matches such that the this like random scale that's made out of matches is exactly balanced. >> Mhm. >> And these are all insight driven puzzles. That's that's the key. They're

26:14not brute force puzzles. They're not like math algebra problems where there's a systematic, you know, algorithm that you can use to solve it. They're really like a creativity type of puzzle. Okay. [laughter] And participants usually used to have some amount of puzzles that were not solved. Okay, here's the key. Here's what they're doing. While they're