Silent zone

We’ve heard and seen it happen often; in that time honored tradition of pigeonholing everyone and anyone, some people end up being dubbed light sleepers and some are called heavy sleepers. It’s a hazard of your sleeping style. Or is it? Much to the consternation of some people everywhere, they just cannot avoid getting up even at the slightest sound and the fault for this lies in the way their brains are hard-wired.

Research conducted by the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston has revealed that those affected most strongly by sleep disorders can attribute their sleeping behavior to pathways deep inside their mind. Having recruited volunteers, all of whom had never previously displayed any form of sleep disorder. They were then made to sleep three nights in a row right in the midst of four speakers playing pre-recorded sounds and as they slept records were made of their sleep patterns and quality thanks to electroencephalography (EEG) imaging. Remarkably, these previously solid sleepers showed marked activity between cortex and thalamus as demonstrated by waves marking stages of sleep, such as deep sleep. These waves however were rudely interrupted by what experts refer to as sleep spindles, occurring only in sleep and with the express purpose of protecting your mind (and by extension you) from any noises at all. The greater its presence, the greater was the incidence of the subjects sleeping like a log.

Understanding the presence of these spindles will help scientists unravel the sleep code and figure out exactly how to help those more greatly affected by sleep disorders than others. By understanding the creation of these sensory road-blocks scientists can mimic these and create a targeted approach for curing sleep deprivation. Techniques that could potentially be used towards this end may include (but are not limited to) behavioral techniques or drugs and devices that can bring on the same effect as the spindles that blocked out sensory assaults on the thalamus. No one is as yet clear on how that is to be done, but scientist are sure that such advances will doubtlessly come about even if we live in a world full of bells, whistles and all sorts of other sounds that act as an intrusion on our thalamus. These results are an eye opener and that is a bit ironic given that the results of this study were geared entirely towards doing the exact opposite of that.