Study: Synchronized sounds sharpen sleep

Sleep is where our brains lay down long-term memories. Sounds tuned to our brain's own rhythms might improve the process, suggests one small but promising sleep study.

Looking for better sleep? Lose the white-noise machine and listen to your brain's own rhythms, suggests a study published Thursday.

During deep sleep, the brain's electrical patterns follow a slow oscillating rhythm, notes a research team headed by Jan Born of the University of Tubingen in Germany. Some sleep researchers have induced these rhythms in rats with "pathological" sleep patterns, using electrical stimulation in a bid to make them sleep better.

But what about just playing back sleepers' own brain rhythms to them instead? In the journal Neuron, 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. Read more >>