It turns out that our brains do way more when we snooze than was once thought — and a new study suggests we can even identify and categorize words while we’re sleeping.
“We show that the sleeping brain can be far more ‘active’ in sleep than one would think,” study co-author Sid Kouider, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, said in a written statement. “Far from falling [into] a limbo when we fall asleep, parts of our brain can routinely process what is going on in our surroundings and apply a relevant scheme of response.”