Source: Good News Network
Being rocked to sleep not only helps adults and babies get a better night’s sleep – new research says that it also boosts their memory.
Most people are accustomed to rocking their babies in order to send them off to dreamland, but this study suggests that the rocking motion could also help adults too.
Young adults who were rocked to sleep not only experienced better sleep quality, but Swiss scientists found it also boosts memory consolidation during sleep.
The study’s volunteer participants were gently rocked from side-to-side by a specially-designed bed until they fall asleep. Not only did the rocking help them to fall asleep faster, but once asleep, they also spent more time in non-rapid eye movement sleep, slept more deeply, and woke up less.
They also had better recall memory the next morning.
The findings could lead to new treatments that don’t rely on sleeping tablets for insomniacs or even for those who suffer memory problems as they age.
“Having a good night’s sleep means falling asleep rapidly and then staying asleep during the whole night,” said biologist Laurence Bayer from the Sleep Medicine Centre of the University of Geneva.
“Our volunteers – even if they were all good sleepers – fell asleep more rapidly when rocked and had longer periods of deeper sleep associated with fewer arousals during the night.
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Previous research by Bayer and colleagues showed continuous rocking during a 45-minute nap helped people to fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. In the new study, 18 healthy young adults were brought into the lab for three nights of sleep.
The first night was intended to get them used to sleeping there. The second night, they slept on a gently rocking bed. On the third night, they slept on an identical bed that wasn’t moving.
After analyzing the participants’ sleep patterns, the researchers subjected them to memory tests.
“To see if this effect also affected memory, we subjected our participants to memory tests: they had to learn pairs of words in the evening and remember them in the morning when they woke up,” said postdoctoral fellow Dr. Aurore Perraul. “And here too, rocking proved beneficial: the test results were much better after a night in motion than after a still night!”
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