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- Babies are soothed by rocking their sleep.
- There is evidence that it is good for adults too.
- Swiss researchers have tested the sleeping sleep of adults.
- They discovered that rocking helped people spend more time in deep sleep – the scene that helps build our memories.
- The results could help find treatments for people with insomnia and for the elderly who have trouble falling asleep and who usually have memory problems.
There is nothing more relaxing than swinging in a hammock. Something about swinging from one side to the other does not only put babies to sleep, but adults too.
A new study from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, published in the journal Current Biology, examined the effect that tipping might have on our sleep.
Scientists recruited 18 young adults to participate in a sleep laboratory. The first night, they got used to their surroundings, then they stayed two more nights, including one on a rocking bed while gently.
Previous research had shown that continuous sway during a 45-minute nap helped people fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply. The team was therefore curious to know how the sway of the night could affect brain waves and the quality of sleep.
"Having a good night's sleep means falling asleep quickly, then staying asleep all night," said Laurence Bayer, one of the authors. "Our volunteers – even if they slept well – fell asleep faster after being rocked and had deeper sleep periods badociated with fewer nighttime activities. So we show that rocking is good for sleeping.
Participants spent less time during the first phases of sleep and more time in sleep with non-rapid eye movements. They also spent more time in deep sleep and woke less.
Sleeping well helps to keep our memory fresh
Swings also increased the number of "sleep axes", which are sudden bursts of oscillatory brain activity occurring during the second stage of light sleep. The spindles of sleep have been badociated with the repetition of memories, helping us to make sense of the day's activities and to remember things better.
To test the participants' memories, the team asked them to study pairs of words. They checked to what extent the subjects remembered these paired words at one sitting in the evening and then again when they woke up the next day. People who were cradled all night were more successful in memory tests than those who were not.
"The present human experience thus provides new information on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of rocking stimuli on sleep," the researchers wrote.
"These findings may be relevant for the development of non-pharmacologic therapies in patients with insomnia or mood disorders, or even in aging populations, who frequently suffer from deep sleep disorders and / or of memory problems. "
Sophie Schwartz, another author of the study, told the BBC that the research could help explain why people fell asleep so easily on board a train.
"I have been contacted by an American working on a tall crane that moves gently all day," she said. "He said that now he understands why he sleeps so deeply during his nap after lunch."
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