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We can learn as we sleep, new research suggests.

A study found that the body is able to take in new information while it sleeps and unconsciously modify the waking behaviour.

Sleep learning experiments are notoriously difficult to conduct, not least because the researchers need to be sure that the subjects are actually asleep throughout.

Several studies have shown the importance of sleep for learning - but none had demonstrated actual learning during the sleeping period, reports Nature Neuroscience.

Now scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science say they have shown sleep learning is possible.

Prod Noam Sobel and his team exposed sleeping subjects to a tone followed by a smell, neither of which woke them up.

This type of conditioning involves the hippocampus, which is also used in memory formation.

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