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Freedom Shield

An exercise set to reflect the Korea Theater of Operations – a combined, joint, all-domain, and interagency operating environment. This annual exercise aims to build understanding between Combined Forces Command, United States Forces Korea, the United Nations Command, and ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), ensuring their ability to fortify the combined defense posture and enhance Alliance response capabilities against a spectrum of security threats. It will feature live, virtual, constructive and field-based training, engaging personnel from the various military services.

Videos
Video by Kevin D Schmidt
Dr. Robert Stickgold - Sleep, Memory, and Dreams: A Unified View
Air Force Research Laboratory
Dec. 22, 2023 | 01:16:00
Sleep, Memory and Dreams: A Unified View
Robert Stickgold, PhD
Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston MA USA

The benefits that sleep confers on memory are surprisingly widespread. For simple procedural skills – how to ride a bicycle or distinguish different coins in one’s pocket – a night of sleep or an afternoon nap following learning leads to an absolute and dramatic improvement in performance. Sleep also stabilizes verbal memories, reducing their susceptibility to interference and decay, processes that all too easily lead to forgetting.

But the action of sleep can be more sophisticated than simply strengthening and stabilizing memories. It can lead to the selective retention of emotional memories, or even of emotional components of a scene, while allowing other memories and parts of scenes to be forgotten. It can extract the gist from a list of words, or the rules governing a complex probabilistic game. It can lead to insights ranging from finding the single word that logically connects three apparently unrelated words, to discovering an unexpected rule that allows for the more efficient solving of mathematical problems. It can facilitate the integration of new information into existing networks of related information and help infants learn artificial grammars. Disruptions of normal sleep in neurologic and psychiatric disorders can lead to a failure of these processes.

Dreams appear to be part of this ongoing memory processing, and can predict subsequent memory improvement. The NEXTUP (Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities) model of dreaming proposes that dreaming aids complex problem solving by supporting divergent creativity, acting more by exploring a problem's "solution space" than by searching for the solution itself.


Key Moments in the video include:

Timeline of a good night’s sleep
Sleep physiology
Neuromodulation varies across the wake-sleep cycle
Regional activation in REM sleep - in the brain
Sleep improves what you learn
Learning rate saturates rapidly
Sleep enhances performance
Sleep keeps what is important
Sleep explains the world - weather prediction task
Dream content and memory evolution
Dream hacking and creativity
NEXTUP - Dreaming by sleep stage

Audience questions:

Trying to reconcile amnesiac patient’s paper - hippocampus must not have much to do with dreams then?
Could you say a sentence or two about what you mean by the ‘hippocampus is cut off’?
How do we - how does one measure information flow between the neocortex and hippocampus? What are those methods?
The word pairs in slow-wave sleep - if you were to wake those subjects up, are they having a subjective experience or dreaming? Or are those processes going on non-consciously?
I’m curious about the relationship between sleep and other periods of time where your mind is at rest - do these work together, are there separate functions?
Schema memory and extracting gist - where do you think (a schema) looks like in a brain? What does sleep do to form or update one?
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Slide show
Press Information

Freedom Shield 25 successfully concludes

Press Release
Mar. 20, 2025

Freedom Shield 25 successfully concludes
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A combined assault force of U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK) special operations personnel conduct a direct action raid on a time sensitive target in an underground facility during a multiday training event associated with exercise Freedom Shield 25 at a training site located east of Seoul, on March 17, 2025. The training event served as a capstone to two-weeks of various training that maintained the combined readiness and lethality of U.S. and ROK special operators. The routine training enables a peaceful and stable Indo-Pacific region through a strong deterrent force. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Taylor Zacherl)

U.S. and ROK special operations forces conduct r...

News
Mar. 19, 2025

U.S. and ROK special operations forces conduct routine combined training during exercise Freedom Shield 2025
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Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, Commanding General of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea, and the Acting President of the Republic of Korea, Sang-Mok Choi, take a group photo at Command Post Theater Air Naval Ground Operations, March 18. The acting-ROK President’s visit focused on discussing the importance and progress of Freedom Shield 2025 and the future of joint ROK-U.S. operations. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Ian Vega-Cerezo, USFK Public Affairs)

ROK Acting President Choi Sang-Mok Visits CP TAN...

News
Mar. 18, 2025

ROK Acting President Choi Sang-Mok Visits CP TANGO During FS 25
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The Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group, U.S. Air Force, and the Republic of Korea Air Force train during Exercise Freedom Shield 25, a defense-oriented, annual exercise featuring live, virtual and field-based training that engages alliance forces and governmental agencies.

Republic of Korea Air Force, US Air Force, US Na...

News
Mar. 15, 2025

Republic of Korea Air Force, US Air Force, US Navy Conduct F-35 Air Integration Training during Freedom Shield...
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F-35 Lightning IIs from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Korea Air Force flight in formation over the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) during integration training for Freedom Shield 25, March 13, 2025.

USAF, ROKAF and USN F-35s integrate during FS25

News
Mar. 14, 2025

USAF, ROKAF and USN F-35s integrate during FS25
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A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lighting II with the 134th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Vermont Air National Guard, takes-off from Cheongju Air Base, Republic of Korea, March 12, 2025. The full-scale rehearsal of Republic of Korea Air Force and Seventh Air Force capabilities at the tactical and operational levels guarantees the strength of the combined air component to defend and defeat any threat to the Alliance. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Noah J. Tancer)

USAF F-35s deploy to ROK for Freedom Shield 25

News
Mar. 13, 2025

USAF F-35s deploy to ROK for Freedom Shield 25
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Space Forces Korea launches into Freedom Shield 25

News
Mar. 12, 2025

Space Forces Korea launches into Freedom Shield 25
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Seventh Air Force begins air component operation...

News
Mar. 10, 2025

Seventh Air Force begins air component operations in Freedom Shield 25
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U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Robert "Todd" Brown, 2nd Infantry Division, ROK-US Combined Division, deputy commanding general, learns the control interface of a commercial aquatic drone during Freedom Shield 25 at a training area near the Imjin River in Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, March 11, 2025. The demonstration showcases the capabilities of cutting-edge underwater vehicles to enhance operational readiness. Freedom Shield 2025 is a multi-domain military training program that integrates ground, air, naval, space and cyberspace elements, enhancing readiness through realistic combat situations. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Eric Kestner)

2ID engineers observe capabilities of underwater...

News
Mar. 11, 2025

2ID engineers observe capabilities of underwater drone for Freedom Shield 25
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ROK Soldiers assigned to the 5th Corps Engineering Brigade River Crossing Company and Soldiers assigned to the 11th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division ROK/U.S. Combined Division, complete construction on a joint bridge, during a combined wet gap crossing exercise, near the Imjin River in Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do from March 11-20, 2024. ROK and U.S. Army units utilized aviation, armor, air defense, chemical, biological and defense capabilities to train the security and protection of the site during the exercise that was designed to verify interoperability through the construction of a joint pontoon bridge. (U.S. Army photo by Pak, Chin-U)

Eighth Army begins annual exercise Freedom Shiel...

News
Mar. 10, 2025

Eighth Army begins annual exercise Freedom Shield 2025
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The Republic of Korea and United States announce...

Press Release
Mar. 06, 2025

The Republic of Korea and United States announce Freedom Shield 25 exercise
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COL Ryan Donald’s Joint US-ROK Press Conference ...

Press Release
Mar. 06, 2025

COL Ryan Donald’s Joint US-ROK Press Conference for Exercise Freedom Shield 25
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