Wired for sleepBROWN UNIVERSITY, MICHAEL COHEAWhen it comes to bedding down in an unfamiliar place, the old adage about sleeping with one eye open may not be that far from the truth. New research helps explain this “first-night effect,” finding that one brain hemisphere remains more active than the other, researchers at Brown University and their colleagues reported today (April 21) in Current Biology.
“It’s an interesting finding,” Steven Stufflebeam, a neuroradiologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, told The Scientist. “They found . . . one hemisphere of the brain was in a more vigilant state during the first night of sleep,” said Stufflebeam, who was not involved in the research.
The first night effect, which explains why people take longer to fall asleep and have poorer sleep quality the first night in a new place, has been well documented in sleep research. It’s also well known that marine mammals and some birds sleep with one half of their brain awake.
“Researchers noticed the first-night effect for a long time, but we didn’t know what was going on in the brain,” study coauthor Masako Tamaki of ...
