Gender and racial bias can be unlearnt during sleep

New York: What if race and gender biases and prejudices can be fixed during sleep? According to researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, a good night's sleep can help modify deeply rooted attitudes in people. Scientists have known that sleep boosts memory formation by resuscitating faint neuron activity shaped during earlier periods, when an individual was awake.

This process can be experimentally stimulated by giving a sleeping individual cues related to an earlier period of learning.The researchers focused on prejudices of race and gender. In a series of exercises designed to counter typical racial and gender biases, participants were shown pictures of men and women of different races.

They learned to associate races and genders with opposing features (female faces with science-related words and black men with "good" words).