Sleeping or the lack of it has always been a topic of discussion and it never gets too old. According to a recent report, as quoted in BBC, rocking adults, much like it happens with children, can help them sleep better. In order to arrive at this, researchers at the University of Geneva constructed a special bed that rocked gently throughout the night. This was tried on around 18 adults and it was examined if there was a change in their sleeping pattern as compared to the times they slept on a normal bed. It was found out that sleeping on the specially made bed woke them up lesser.

The same report states that the rocking motion helps adults in sleeping better and also improves their memory. Those who were examined spent around three nights at the sleep laboratory in Geneva. It was deduced that those who were rocked slept for a longer period of time. Lead study author Laurence Bayer said that the rocking motion should be tactfully done so that it doesn’t cause nausea.

“A hammock would probably not be as efficient, although people often report a sense of relaxation when rocked in a hammock. In our paper, we test the effect of rocking on one night, but we have no idea if the effects will still be there over a long-term period,” she said. It was also found out that those who slept on the rocking bed could recall better.

“To see if this also affected memory, we subjected our participants to memory tests: they had to learn pairs of random words in the evening and remember them in the morning when they woke up,” Aurore Perrault, another researcher at the faculty was quoted saying. “Here too, rocking proved beneficial: the test results were much better after a night in motion than after a still night,” she added.

Courtesy: The Indian Express