Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Science
You’re lying in a hammock by a breezy shore. The hammock rocks softly back and forth. In no time…(snoring). It turns out that’s not just the relaxation of being on vacation that’s bringing on sleep. It’s the rocking hammock. That might not be a huge surprise—babies get rocked to sleep. But researchers wanted to know how rocking works.
They recruited 12 healthy males, all good sleepers. Each volunteer twice took an afternoon nap in a dark room on a custom-made bed that could rock. For one nap, the bed was still. For the other, it rocked gently.
All the men fell asleep faster when they swayed. And the scientists monitored the men’s brain activity during all the naps. They found that rocking increased the duration of what’s called N2, a non-REM stage that accounts for about half of a good night’s sleep.
Rocking also increased deep-sleep-associated brain activity—so-called slow oscillations as well as bursts of action called sleep spindles. The research was published in the journal Current Biology. [Laurence Bayer et al., "Rocking Synchronizes Brain Waves During a Short Nap"]
The next step is to find out whether rocking can help treat sleep disorders. Meanwhile, insomniacs can always try a hammock.
—Cynthia Graber
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
See what we're tweeting about
2 Comments
Add CommentI wonder if this is related to "restless leg syndrome" or the rocking behavior that many Autistic and developmentally delayed people exhibit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was literally born rocking, i.e., the moment I was out my mother I curled into a rugby ball and started very rhythmically and very powerfully rocking backwards and forwards, so energetically so the doctors initially thought I was having a fit; I continued doing this for hours until they finally placed me in with the other babies whereupon my rocking motion immediately sent my crib crashing into all those around me, forcing them, apparently, to break the rules and place chocks under my wheels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis was in Feb 1959 and I used to rock my big old fashioned battleship of a pram down the street despite the brakes being on, and my big old wheel-less wooden cot 'round the room with such apparent effortlessness family friends used to bring people with them just to prove the stories they were telling about me were true.
This is not just family legend - I actually remember most if not all of this like it was yesterday, being one of these people who seem to remember almost every moment of their lives.
Nor is this some activity in my past because to the present day, whenever I want to contemplate anything, or simply soothe myself, I sit in any chair available - preferably an armchair - and basically rock the poor thing to bits. Nor is the rocking anything I actually do myself. I simply 'look' for this sort of tornadoey 'binary' pulse sensation located somewhere down towards my pelvic basin, 'sit' on it, and off I go.
My record's four days of doing this continually, but that was at a time of considerable distress for me circa 1997/2001. I was having family/relationship related problems primarily caused by or at least exacerbated by an increase in other weird things I've always been prone to since my earliest childhood: time seeming to stop dead; objects close by seeming to be hundreds of feet if not miles away; 'vortices' seemingly appearing out of nowhere and sucking me in; turning the corner in the high street and seemingly finding myself on a different planet; people turning into 'x-rays of their skeletons before my eyes; having surges of 'solid as steel' energy rearing up from my pelvic region and try to pound its way out my chest; being aware of a gorilla sized energy body existing inside my much smaller body and trying to burst it way out.
I know of other people who've had their own equivalent of such experiences, but they've either gone off their rocker or topped themselves.
The one thing that's allowed me to develop a somewhat detached 'virtual reality' perception of what I experience, has always been my rocking.