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Category: Sleep
How To “Boost” Your Brain’s Performance While You’re Fast Asleep
People in the study slept better and their memory was boosted.
People in the study slept better and their memory was boosted.
Special sounds during sleep can improve sleep and boost memory.
The gentle sounds were timed to coincide with natural ‘brain waves’: the waves of electrical activity in the brain.
People in the study were able to recall 26 percent more words they had learned after being exposed to the sounds during sleep.
Dr Phyllis Zee, a study author, said:
“This is an innovative, simple and safe non-medication approach that may help improve brain health.
This is a potential tool for enhancing memory in older populations and attenuating normal age-related memory decline.”
Deep sleep is known to be critical for memory consolidation: the process by which memories are laid down for the long-term.
However, in older adults, the amount of time spent in deep sleep typically reduces.
The study compared the acoustic stimulation with sham treatments, which acted as a placebo.
Older individuals — who were targeted for the study — showed better sleep and enhanced memory only after the real acoustic stimulation.
The study’s authors explain their conclusions:
“Acoustic stimulation that was phase-locked to sleep slow waves in older adults had systematic effects on sleep indices and performance on a declarative memory test.
These results provide the first demonstration that acoustic stimulation alters SWA [slow wave activity or, colloquially, deep sleep] and can enhance word pair recall in older adults.
These results converge with other findings in young adults indicating that acoustic stimulation during sleep is a promising tool for altering SWA and enhancing sleep-dependent memory consolidation.”
The sound waves in the study were timed to coincide with people’s brain waves.
Their brain waves were read in real time and the sounds timed to help synchronise activity across the neurons.
Dr Nelly Papalambros, the study’s first author, said:
“The idea is to be able to offer this for people to use at home.
We want to move this to long-term, at-home studies.”
Related
The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Papalambros et al., 2017).
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Why Sleep-Deprived People Push Everyone Away (And It’s Contagious)
Almost half of all Americans report feeling lonely or left out.
Almost half of all Americans report feeling lonely or left out.
Sleep deprivation makes people feel more lonely.
Not only that, but lack of sleep makes people less likely to engage with others, so compounding the problem of loneliness.
The reason is that people feel socially unattractive when they don’t get enough sleep.
And others spot this: loneliness is spread, almost virally, from sleepy people to the well-rested after only a short encounter.
The study’s findings show that lack of sleep and loneliness interact with each other to make the problem worse.
Professor Matthew Walker, study co-author, said:
“We humans are a social species.
Yet sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers.”
Sleep’s social cost
For one study, the researchers scanned people’s brains while they watched videos of strangers walking towards them.
Brain activity in the sleep deprived showed they would rather avoid social contact.
Professor Walker said:
“The less sleep you get, the less you want to socially interact.
In turn, other people perceive you as more socially repulsive, further increasing the grave social-isolation impact of sleep loss.
That vicious cycle may be a significant contributing factor to the public health crisis that is loneliness.”
Dr Eti Ben Simon, the study’s first author, said:
“It’s perhaps no coincidence that the past few decades have seen a marked increase in loneliness and an equally dramatic decrease in sleep duration.
Without sufficient sleep we become a social turn-off, and loneliness soon kicks in.”
Professor Walker thinks the lack of a safety net is why sleep deprivation can be so harmful:
“There’s no biological or social safety net for sleep deprivation as there is for, say, starvation.
That’s why our physical and mental health implode so quickly even after the loss of just one or two hours of sleep.
On a positive note, just one night of good sleep makes you feel more outgoing and socially confident, and furthermore, will attract others to you.”
Related
- 8 Shocking Ways Loneliness Rewires Your Brain (P)
- Banish Loneliness: 10 Simple Techniques To Feel More Connected (P)
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Simon & Walker, 2018).
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