Cell Rep puzzle: Why does "shake" make you sleep better?

We seem to fall asleep more easily when we are lying on a gently shaking bed.
like a baby, she goes into a sweet dream every day when her mother hums "Lullaby" (or other soothing songs) and shakes the crib.
bumpy bus and a simple version of the shaker for many people.
I'm sure you've seen people who have been sleeping dead in their cars, and their heads have been "shaken" by bumpy cars.
, it turns out that lying on a bed that shakes gently makes it easier for people to fall asleep.
scientists have also confirmed through several studies that shaking beds can promote sleep in humans and mice, but the mechanism behind this phenomenon has not yet been identified.
in a recent study published in Cell Reports, a team from Thomas Jefferson University in the United States found that habits play a crucial role in monotonously stimulated sleep induction, reducing wake-up feelings and increasing sleep tendencies through a common mechanism.
whether you're a baby who's been gently shaken to sleep or an adult snoozing in a coach.
that everyone likes to fall asleep with some slight vibration.
, author of the study and an assistant professor of neuroscience at the Synact Biology Center, said: "But the neural mechanisms behind this well-known phenomenon remain largely a mystery.
to understand this mystery, the researchers used fruit flies to build a model system to study vibration-induced sleep mechanisms.
To test whether gentle mechanical stimulation can promote sleep in fruit flies, the researchers placed a fruit fly activity monitoring box on a shelf about 40 cm above the multi-tube vortex, allowing the small vibration of the vortex to drive the fruit fly's "bedroom."
after establishing a baseline sleep/awakening behavior for the day, they vibrated for 1 day in 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness against three control fruit flies.
researchers found that all fruit flies, including males and females, had significantly increased sleep duration during vibration and were less responsive to the light pulses that would wake them up.
, fruit flies are more awake after vibration, suggesting that sleep is more stable during vibration (better sleep quality).
, fruit flies behave as if they slept longer than they actually needed during vibration.
, the sleep of fruit flies showed a normal decrease towards the end of the light cycle, indicating that the circadian rhythm wake-up signal was regulating vision and that fruit flies did not exhibit difficulty in acting during vibration.
findings suggest that vibration-induced sleep is similar to normal sleep and may play an important role.
but the researchers say how much sleep fruit flies can get when they vibrate depends not only on their genetic background, but also on the frequency and amplitude of the vibration.
, multiple sensory organs are involved in the process.
interesting is that the first vibrations make fruit flies more active than usual, but they gradually go to sleep.
In addition, fruit flies improve their sleep capacity when they are exposed to vibration multiple times, suggesting that habitualization is a simple, non-correlated way of learning that regulates sleep through monotonous stimuli.
traditional sense, habitualization is seen as allowing animals to ignore predictable and un important stimuli, allowing them to focus on significant changes in the environment.
, fruit flies realize that vibration is not a threat, which reduces their response to stimuli, otherwise they become alert," Koh said.
seems necessary to suppress alertness to vibration-induced sleep, as mutant fruit flies with elevated dopamine levels become more alert and therefore do not fall asleep due to vibration.
researchers say it's unclear whether similar mechanisms work in humans.
further research will help us develop and optimize sensory stimulation methods as an aid to human sleep," said Koh, a researcher at the university.
" Koh team initially aimed to use fruit flies as model systems to learn more about their underlying neural mechanisms.
They plan to identify specific neurons in the fruit fly brain involved in this process and determine whether vibration-induced sleep enhances memory and prolongs life as normal sleep, as well as repeated stimuli of other senses, such as vision and smell, that induce sleep.