Want better sleep? A new study suggests ditching the white-noise machine and tuning into your brain’s own rhythms.
The research from the University of Tubingen in Germany suggests that slow sounds tuned into the brain’s rhythms during sleep improves not only those rhythms but memory as well.
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During deep sleep, the brain’s electrical patterns follow a slow oscillating rhythm, the scientists said.
Head researcher Jan Born and colleagues played rhythmic sounds generated to match electrical brain readings of 11 sleepers, playing the sounds of their own brain oscillations to them during deep sleep. “The beauty lies in the simplicity,” Born said in a statement.
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After they’d been exposed during sleep to stimulating sounds that were in sync with the brain’s slow oscillation rhythm, the subjects were better able to remember word associations they had learned the evening before. Out-of-sync sounds, however, didn’t have any effect.
In addition to boosting memory, Born suggests that the brain rhythms might improve sleep for those suffering from insomnia. But don’t rush out and buy slow sleep sound recordings just yet — the sounds will need to be tuned to each person’s own rhythms for the effect to work, the study notes.
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Findings were published online April 11 in the journal Neuron.
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