Do couples sleeping together entrain their...

published by Tom Munnecke on Thu, 08/05/2010 - 21:16
English

I'm just wondering if two people sleeping together influence each other's sleep cycles.  I get the impression that sometimes my wife and I just kind of get out of sync. 

 

Any research on this?  I only have one Zeo... is it possible to run two different Zeos from the same bed?

Derek@Zeo's picture

Derek@Zeo

Fri, 08/06/2010 - 05:52

Hi munnecke -

 

Plenty of studies have been done to show that partners affect each others' sleep (e.g. partner's snoring, children, and others), but fewer have studied the intricacies of sleep cycles (partially because it hasn't been an easy thing to study).

 

Before I break straight into a personal anecdote, here is one study that showed that partners influence each other's movement during sleep, despite couples generally being unaware of that effect (which could be at least partially attiributed to our poor memory of short sleep disruptions.

 

Now - the personal anecdote. My partner and I sleep very differently from one another - for starters, I'm a night owl and she's a hummingbird. But it gets more interesting when it comes to our sleep patterns - they look very different when one of us is out of town, and very similar to one another when sleeping together.

 

Here's an example of a night together:

 

 

 

 

Not ideal for comparison, but if you look closely, the tail end of almost every one of our transitions line up within 5 minutes of each other... Seems pretty neat to me.

 

Needless to say, I hope this answers your question about using two Zeos at the same time. (The headband will sync with whichever bedside display it was last attached to, and it's not a problem having two going at once).

 

In conclusion - I'm not entirely clear how (or how much) partners affect each others' sleep cycles, but this is a start...

 

Best,

Derek

Steve@Zeo's picture

Steve@Zeo

Fri, 08/06/2010 - 06:06

Also, after a fairly quick search, this is all I could find about actual sleep/wake cycles and the interdependence of those cycles between partners. And this was using activity and diaries as surrogates for sleep, not actual sleep stage information.

Tom Munnecke

Fri, 08/06/2010 - 06:33

Thanks...a couple of more thoughts:

Strogatz' Sync http://www.amazon.com/SYNC-Eme.....0786868449 talks a lot about synchronization in nature... (e.g. fireflies along a river all flashing in synchrony)... even very subtle influences can have great effect.  (e.g. women living in a dorm synchronizing their menstrual cycles.)

 

Also, are there any hormonal changes happening with changes of sleep state?  I'm wondering whether one partner's breath might convey hormonal information that might affect the other.  Or might there be some mirror neurons at work?

 

and here is another article I found on PubMed..  

Psychosom Med. 2010
Jul;72(6):578-86. Epub 2010 May 13.

It's more than
sex: exploring the dyadic nature of sleep and implications for health.

Troxel
WM.

Department of Psychiatry and Psychology,
University of Pittsburgh, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
troxelw@upmc.edu

Abstract

Sleep is a critical health
behavior and one that is typically shared between husbands and wives or
romantic partners. However, the science of sleep has traditionally
conceptualized and evaluated sleep at the level of the individual.
Considering the social context of sleep represents a significant shift
in sleep research and also offers a critical opportunity for
investigating sleep as a novel pathway linking close relationships with
health. The purpose of this review is to integrate research that focuses
on how sleep affects or is affected by close relationship functioning
and to provide a heuristic framework for understanding the interface
between close relationships, sleep, and health. Exploring the links
between close relationships and sleep may contribute to our
understanding of why some relationships confer health benefits, whereas
others confer health risks.

Steve@Zeo's picture

Steve@Zeo

Fri, 08/06/2010 - 07:12

There are lots of chemical changes going on in the brain and the body during sleep and between sleep phases. Human growth hormone, melatonin, cortisol, GABA, acetylcholine, dopamine, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. Some of these things are wake promoting and some of these things are sleep promoting. Some interactions occur more with slow wave sleep, and then REM sleep is a whole different story.

A lot of questions definitely remain about how these chemicals work, interact, and maybe even effect those around us. Principles and Practices of Sleep Medicine (Eds - Kryger, Roth & Dement) contains a lot of valuable information about the basic neurology and physiology of sleep in one place (along with a whole slew of other topics), but it's pretty expensive and there's really nothing about sleep interactions. This is a new topic and ripe for interesting research, for sure.