Brain Waves Important for Sleeping
A new research conducted on the subject of sleep has revealed the fact that the reason why some people sleep without being affected by the surrounding sounds, and some wake up because of every little commotion are the brain waves.
During the early stages of sleep, the sleep spindles which are bursts of brain activity occur numerous times each minute. They are very short, as they last for half then a second, but it seems that the less sleep spindles a person has, the higher the chances are that he will be bothered by each and every sound. These sleep spindles occur right after dozing off and before the deep sleep period, in what is known as the stage 2 sleep. Thien Thanh Dang-Vu, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and the main researcher of the study wanted to find out if these sleep spindles influence the sleeping of a person.
In order to be able to do so, he and his colleagues used the electroencephalography (EEG), which uses electrodes on the scalp of a person in order to detect the activity from one’s brain. They wanted to see if the brain has a certain specific pattern which would be indicate the way in which people react to the noises they hear while they sleep. He had twelve volunteers who slept in a hotel room where the scientists measured their brain activity. During the first night the volunteers slept in peace, as they were not disturbed, but the situation was different the following night.
They started using different noises, such as the ones made by passing cars, of mobile phone ringtones, and so on. The people who had the fewest sleep spindles were the light sleepers, or the ones who were bothered by every little sound made. He said that the difference in sleep spindles wasn’t too much, as there were only a few extra spindles which the heavy sleepers experienced. However, he said that the number of spindles was an indicator of the level of noise required to wake a person up. He said that the spindles may help one ignore the outside sounds, and in most of the cases, this number is stable within the individuals. That means that this can indicate how heavy or how light one sleeps.
They are currently working on a method of increasing the number of sleep spindles one has during sleeping. It is a known fact that the light sleepers are less rested than the heavy sleepers, and this could be very helpful for them. He said that a drug which might have this quality might be developed in the future, but that they have to make further research in the domain in order to achieve that. They might also use the knowledge of the fact that the older adults need less sleep than the younger one, which means that they might develop a method of convincing the mind that one had enough sleep.
He suggested that one could engage in certain activities and rituals before going to sleep. For example each and every time he might drink a glass of milk, or he might read something. This might “teach” the mind that it is time for sleeping, and he might fall asleep faster, and thus reach the deep sleep faster. You should try it sometimes; it might work in your case as well.
