First night at a new place causes sleeplessness due to night watchfulness

Many of you must have experienced a half slept night when you slept in a hotel room during vacation. First night spent in an unfamiliar place provide not as quality sleep as one can have on his personal bed at home. A new study suggests that a part of the brain remains awake for the sake of watchfulness when one spends first night in a new environment. - Make money online with blogging -

As a part of the study, 35 adults were tracked for their brain activity during two sleep sessions in a sleep lab. The researchers concluded, one of the four hemispheres of the brain remains partially awake during first sleep session, but same was not repeated in second sleep session. Besides, the participants took 7-12 minutes more to finally sleep on first night with unusual surrounding. - best web hosting -

To make findings stronger, the researchers used data from two types of neuroimaging scans, magnetoencephalography and polysomnography. The data indicated that the participants had less slow-wave brain activity during the first sleep session compared with the second. In other words, the participants did not sleep deeply during first night when compared with second sleep session. - bank loans for education -

Moreover, when sleepers were exposed to unfamiliar beeping noises while they were asleep, the participants woke up faster after listening sounds during first night as compared to second night. Although researchers have previously made similar claims, they did not use advanced techniques to arrive to their findings. The new study used advanced neuroimaging scans to determine the reason behind the sleepless behavior in unfamiliar places. - Car Free Insurance Online Quote -

“This partial half-asleep, half- awake state may work as a ‘night watch’ to monitor unfamiliar surroundings”, said study co-author Masako Tamaki, a postdoctoral research associate in Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences at Brown University. - bad credit remortgages -

"Playing sounds into the right ears (stimulating the left hemisphere) of 35 volunteers was more likely to wake them up than if the noises were played into their left ear, the study published in the journal Current Biology found," according to a news report published by Wired. - Students Debt Consolidation Loans -

The more active side of the brain was specifically seen during slow-wave sleep state, more commonly referred to as deep sleep. When the researchers repeated the laboratory experiment on the second and third nights they found the left hemisphere could not be stimulated in the same way during deep sleep.

According to a report in MinnPost by Susan Perry, "In fact, sleep researchers have given the phenomenon a name — the “first-night effect” — and it’s why they usually ignore data collected during the initial night a person sleeps in a lab for a sleep-related study."

The reason for the first-night effect has been a puzzle, however — until, perhaps, now. A new study has found that when we’re in an unfamiliar place, such as a hotel room, one hemisphere of our brain tends to stay vigilant as we sleep.

A report published in HuffingtonPost informed, "In a new study, researchers tracked brain activity for 35 adults over two sleep sessions in a sleep lab and found that one of the four hemispheres of the brain actually stayed partially awake during the first sleep session — but not during the second."

“This partial half-asleep, half- awake state may work as a ‘night watch’ to monitor unfamiliar surroundings,” study co-author Masako Tamaki, a postdoctoral research associate in Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences at Brown University, told The Huffington Post.

(Source by: NHV news)