Not only babies like to be lulled to sleep. Adults also fall asleep faster and sleep harder when they are swayed slightly – we read in New Scientist.
Scientists from the Swiss University of Geneva, after an experiment conducted on ten men, argue about the beneficial effect of rocking on sleep. The subjects took afternoon 45-minute naps twice. The first time they fell asleep in a gently swaying bed, the second time – in a still bed. At the same time, the work of their brains was studied using EEG.
The rockers fell asleep in four minutes – 30 to 40 percent faster than when they lay still in bed.
Rocking it also helped you sleep deeper. The second phase of sleep lasted 25-30 percent. longer than when they slept without rocking. The quality of this phase also improved, as evidenced by the greater density of the so-called Sleep spindles – impulses showing brain activity during an EEG test. At the same time, it is known that higher density of sleep spindles is associated with improved memory and the ability to isolate from nuisance noise.
Scientists suspect that rocking helps to synchronize sleep-related brain waves from the hypothalamus and cortex. It is possible that this process involves the vestibular system in the inner ear, which reacts to our movement and is involved in maintaining balance. Details in the journal Current Biology. (PAP)