Sleep Enhancement by Sound Stimulation

Abstract

Recently research groups have reported that the depth and/or duration of Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) can be increased and memory consolidation can be improved by playing short sounds with approximately 1-2 second intervals during or prior to SWS. These studies have used sounds with neutral or negative valence: sinusoidal 1-kHz tones or short pink noise bursts. We have confirmed memory improvement with own experiments using short pink noise bursts. Since music therapy research shows beneficial effects of pleasant, natural sounds and music, the sounds in the experiments may have been suboptimal, and we are currently extending these finding using optimized sound stimulus. In this work in progress experiment setup is described.