They discover that the Paraguayan hammock brings surprising advantages to the brain

Anyone who has already put a baby to sleep by gently cradling or napping in a Paraguayan hammock, He knows that rocking promotes sleep. But why?

To understand this phenomenon and the brain mechanisms involved, researchers from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Lausanne (UNIL) and Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), Switzerland, conducted two studies showing that slow and repeated movement during the night modulates the activity of brain waves. Therefore, the balance not only induces a deeper sleep, but also helps to strengthen the memory, which consolidates during certain phases of sleep.

Scientists had already shown in a previous study that swaying during a 45-minute nap helps people to fall asleep more quick and further deeply. But what are the effects of this slow movement in the brain? The researchers conducted a new study whose results are detailed in Current biology.

The power of the Paraguayan hammock

The study, conducted in Geneva by Laurence Bayer, researcher at the Department of Fundamental Neuroscience at the UNIGE School of Medicine and at the "HUG Sleep Medicine Center", and at Sophie Schwartz, Professor in the Department Fundamental Neuroscience at UNIGE's Faculty of Medicine explores the impact of the ongoing balance on sleep and the brainwaves that characterize it.

A total of 18 healthy young adults spent two nights at the Sleep Medicine Center, one in a moving bed and the other in the same bed, but in a still position. "A good night's sleep means falling asleep quickly and staying asleep all night long"Said Laurence Bayer." However, we observed that our participants, although they slept well in both cases, fell asleep more quickly when they swayed. In addition, they had longer periods of deep sleep and fewer "micro-alarms", a factor often badociated with poor sleep quality. "

The strengthening of deep sleep by balancing is a direct consequence of brain wave activity during sleep. The rolling bearing This helps to synchronize the neuronal activity that plays an important role in the consolidation of sleep, but also memory.at. "To see if this effect also affected memory, we subjected our participants to memory tests: they had to learn pairs of words in the afternoon and remember them in the morning when they woke up", explains Aurore Perrault, researcher at the Faculty of Medicine. of UNIGE. "And there too, the balance was shown to be beneficial: the test results were much better after a moving night than after a quiet night," he added.