A burst of "pink noise" may lead to more restorative sleep

> You can make more of these electrical slow waves through an auditory stimulus, if it comes at just the right time.

I wonder: 50ms of pink noise at the right time to make your sleep more restorative. Why or how should such a “backdoor” have evolved? Sleeping by a crackling fire? Pure coincidence, like a bug in the system that never made enough of a difference to come under selection pressure?

	▲	e40 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just a bug or unintended consequence of something else?

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evulhotdog 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From what I’ve read, a simple fan while sleeping checks the box for pink noise.

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NewJazz 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Did you read this article?

Previous work had already shown that delivering an auditory stimulus at the peak of slow waves can deepen the waves.

“You can make more of these electrical slow waves through an auditory stimulus, if it comes at just the right time. Similar to a child on a swing, if you push them when they’re at the right moment in their movement, you can make that swing go farther,” Lewis says. “The challenge is: How do you find just the right time?”

The auditory stimulus used for this study is a 50-millisecond burst of pink noise. Similar to white noise, pink noise contains all sound frequencies audible to the human ear, but the lower pitch frequencies are louder and the higher pitch frequencies are softer. This creates a balanced, gentle sound similar to steady rain or a distant waterfall.

	▲	e40 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder if this is why I love the sound of rain at night when I was a kid?

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trinsic2 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think this is a great idea. I guess HN does think this scientific enough. ;)