When it comes to sleeping well (or falling asleep), there are many tips that range from the temperature of the room to banishing the smartphone from the bedroom, passing by what you eat, what that we drink, but also the fact of sleeping alone or in pairs, bedding, etc. A Swiss study, published in January 2019 in the journal Current Biology , focused on a point that we had not necessarily thought of:the impact of movement on sleep. Yes, yes, the movement. No question of dancing while sleeping, however, but of being rocked, like babies. Well, it turns out that rocking has a very positive impact on sleep quality and memory. Forget beds and invest in hammocks!
To reach these conclusions, the researchers observed the brain activity and certain physiological variables (heart rate, respiratory rate, etc.) of 18 volunteers for 2 nights, one in a moving bed, the other in a stationary position. . Closing? Falling asleep was faster when rocked and deep sleep phases longer, with fewer micro-awakenings. And that's not all:memory is also impacted, since the participants had to remember pairs of words before going to bed. Again, the results were better after the night in motion (thanks to a better synchronization of the neural activity of the thalamo-cortical networks). The same tests carried out on mice, some of which had had their inner ear receptors altered, led to the conclusion that rocking has a real impact on the part of the brain in charge of sleep quality. Researchers now want to determine which neural networks are specifically impacted. This could pave the way for new ways to treat sleep disorders. To be continued…
