Parts of your brain continue to function when you sleep, researchers at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the University of Cambridge have discovered. They recorded the EEG (brain waves) of participants while they were awake, instructing them to label certain words as either animals or objects at the press of a button, using their right hand for animals and their left hand for objects.
Once the participants fell asleep, the test continued, but with a completely new list of words to ensure that responses would require the extraction of a word that meant something, rather than a simpler match between question and answer. The researchers' observations of brain activity showed that the participants continued to respond accurately to the words (albeit more slowly) as they fell asleep.
