Swing like a baby promotes better sleep in adults

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We know that babies have the advantage of being rocked. A study now suggests that it also helps adults sleep better.

Researchers from the University of Geneva built a special bed that rocked gently all night long.

They tested it on 18 young adults and found that they woke up less often and that they slept deeper than on a normal bed.

The scientists said the rocking motion had resulted in a longer period of slow brainwaves, causing deep sleep and improving their memory.

The volunteers spent three nights in a sleep laboratory in Geneva: one to get used to it, one on a rocking bed and the other on the same bed, but in a motionless position.

The electrodes recorded their brain waves and discovered that the period of deep sleep was prolonged by rocking.

Laurence Bayer, lead author of the study and researcher at UNIGE's Faculty of Medicine, pointed out that the rocking motion was slow enough not to cause nausea.

"A hammock would probably not be as effective, although people often report a feeling of relaxation when they are rocked in a hammock," she said.

"In our article, we test the effect of rocking on a night, but we do not know if the effects will still be present in the long run."

The researchers also found that adults had better memory in the morning when they slept on the rocking bed.

Aurore Perrault, another researcher at the faculty, said, "To see if it also affected memory, we put our participants to memory tests: they had to learn word pairs randomly in the evening, as a souvenir in the morning when they wake up, "she said.

"Here too, rocking has proven to be beneficial: the test results were much better after a moving night than after a quiet night."

Rocking mice sleep faster

A parallel study conducted by the University of Lausanne in Switzerland examined the effect of gently swinging mouse cages as they fell asleep.

She found that the swing reduced the time needed to fall asleep and increased their sleep time.

However, it did not seem to increase the quality of sleep, contrary to what happened in humans.

The study on mice has also proven that the vestibular system, the system that tells the brain when our head is moving, must work for the sway to be effective.

The researchers agreed that in the absence of widely available rocking beds, further research was needed to determine how the findings could help people with sleep disorders.

Professor Sophie Schwartz, neuroscientist at UNIGE and author of the study, explained that the study explained why people fell asleep in trains and other vehicles.

"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."