Since long and quality sleep is one of the most important factors for good health, scientists are constantly doing research to figure out how we can sleep better, in order to wake up feeling fresh and filled with energy.
Some individuals manage to sleep peacefully and deeply without any extra help but with others this goal isn't so easily attainable.
For this reason, researchers from Harvard Medical School have done a study with 12 volunteers. During the experiment, the participants slept in the lab on huge begs with satin sheets.
During sleep, the brain waves of the sleepers were recorded with an electroencephalogram. They were not disturbed the first night, so that their brain activity, more specifically their sleep spindle, could be recorded.
But on the 2nd and 3rd nights, the volunteers were forced to endure the loud sounds of a ringing telephone, heated argument and an airplane taking off.
At the end of the study, it was found that there are people who are able to sleep even under unbearable noise, all thanks to the activity of the sleep spindles.
Head of the scientific study Jeffrey Ellenbogen believes that studying this activity is crucial to finding the key to deep sleep.
"If we find out how many spindles a person can generate and discover a way to stimulate their activity, every single person will be able to sleep soundly, regardless of the noise in their surrounding environment, " Ellenbogen told Wired.
The effect of sleep spindles is thought to be linked to the thalamus - the area of the brain that analyzes noise and other external stimuli.
Scientists have still not found why this effect is completely natural in some, while others need to have their sleep spindles stimulated. But the effect is believed to be inducible.
Some scientific theories claim that quality sleep is directly related to memories, while according to others, sleep has a stronger connection to IQ.
