FYI Health Tip
Increasing the number of sleep spindles could help you sleep through those noises that usually wake you up
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Are you a light sleeper? Do loud noises wake you easily? Recent research published in the journal Current Biology may explain why some people sleep more soundly than others. Sleep researchers from the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School found that light sleepers have less of a protective brain activity called the “sleep spindle” that may help you sleep through a noisy night.
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Loading ...The sleep spindle is a special brain rhythm that happens during non-REM sleep. It is visible when tracing the fluctuations in the brains’ electric field with electroencephalography (EEG). Sleep spindles help to block out environmental disruption, allowing you to sleep through loud noises. Spindle activity is thought to protect your brain so that the important work of making memories can continue without interruption while you are sleeping.
In the experiment, twelve people were monitored in a sleep laboratory for three consecutive nights. The first night was quiet, and researchers focused on counting how many sleep spindles occurred. The second and third nights the study participants were subjected to increasingly louder noises like traffic, telephones, and hospital machines while they slept. The researchers found that study participants who made more sleep spindles on the first quiet night awoke less during the noisy nights. The higher spindle producing sleepers also required louder sounds to disrupt their sleep.
In other words, people who make more sleep spindles can sleep through more noise. The study shows that it is possible to predict an individuals’ ability to stay asleep in a noisy environment by seeing how many sleep spindles they have. Interestingly, people with insomnia have similar spindle rates as normal sleepers. Not all populations are the same, however. Older people have a lower tolerance to noise while sleeping and a lower spindle rate.
What’s the next step? The researchers think that increasing the number of sleep spindles could help you sleep through those noises that usually wake you up. They want to harness the power of sleep spindles by raising the spindle rate with behavioral techniques, medications or assistive devices. Right now little is known about what makes one person produce more spindles than another, or how we can produce more of these protective brain patterns. Learning about the role of sleep spindles is just one more step towards finding a solution for those who are seeking restful, restorative, and healthy sleep.
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