Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: May 15, 2016

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REAL LIFE NEWS: FIRST NIGHT OF SLEEP IN A STRANGE PLACE IS ALWAYS DISTURBED – HERE’S WHY

by Hazed

Have you ever noticed that when you try to sleep in a strange place, your first night there is disturbed? Whether you are staying with a friend or in a hotel, you may find you toss and turn, sleeping badly, unable to switch off your alert brain.

Scientists have known about this phenomenon for 50 years, but now they can explain why it happens. It’s because when you enter a new environment, one half of your brain stays more awake than the other, enabling you to respond better to signs of danger such as unusual sounds or smells. Very useful in the jungle, but not so much in a luxury hotel!

Other animals sleep like this all the time, going so far as to keep one eye open to correspond with the half of the brain that stays awake. This allows some creatures, such as the bottlenose dolphin, to stay awake and alert for up to five days in a row.

Yuka Sasaki from Brown University wondered if humans did something similar – if so, it would account for that first night sleeplessness. She invited 11 volunteers to sleep a few nights in her lab, while she measured their brain activity using a medical scanner, while electrodes measured their brain waves, eye movements, heart rate and more. That sounds very uncomfortable, but Sasaki explained, “The scanner has a bed that could go completely flat, and we put a lot of pillows and towels to make it comfortable. It was a little restricted but people could still sleep.”

As expected, the volunteers took longer to fall asleep on the first night, and they slept less deeply. Their slow-wave activity, which is associated with deep sleep, was found to be a lot weaker in the left half of their brains, but only on the first night. The source article below has a lot more detail about the results.

While writing this, I have the Metallica song Enter Sandman going through my head. “Sleep with one eye open, gripping the pillow tight,” the lyrics go. Click the second link below to hear it.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/why-we-sleep-badly-on-our-first-night-in-a-new-place/479091/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD-E-LDc384

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