January 24, 2010
Bed sharing 'drains men's brains'
From the BBC:
When men spend the night with a bed mate their sleep is disturbed, whether they make love or not, and this impairs their mental ability the next day.
The lack of sleep also increases a man's stress hormone levels.
According to the New Scientist study, women who share a bed fare better because they sleep more deeply.
Professor Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues at the University of Vienna studied eight unmarried, childless couples in their 20s.
Each couple was asked to spend 10 nights sleeping together and 10 apart while the scientists assessed their rest patterns with questionnaires and wrist activity monitors.
The next day the couples were asked to perform simple cognitive tests and had their stress hormone levels checked.
More here. [Thanks to Kris Kotarski.]
Posted by Abbas Raza at 03:34 AM | Permalink
Comments
What I find interesting is that the author of this article (and, presumably, the head scientist) wait until the end to indicate that couples do get accustomed to sleeping together. Essentially, they are testing people who are sleeping alongside someone relatively new to their lives. I'm not sure why this is such a striking idea: it is disruptive to sleep alongside someone you do not know that well, especially for the men in this study. The term "couples" seems (strategically) misleading. I'd be curious about same-sex couples.
Also, I don't trust the accuracy of this statement: "'Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.'" Since when? Catullus writes about sharing his "little bed" with his lovers. What on earth does the scientist mean by "historically" and "meant to." He's trying to back up a moral claim with a statement of historical fact that has no basis in human history.
This study and its reporting are the only things that seem bizarre to me.
Posted by: Maeve Adams | Jan 24, 2010 1:36:45 PM
Maeve, I have to admit, it looks like a pretty shady study. Sorry, I was in a rush this morning...
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jan 24, 2010 2:27:02 PM
"What on earth does the scientist mean by "historically" and "meant to." He's trying to back up a moral claim with a statement of historical fact that has no basis in human history."
Maeve, welcome to the brave new world of Evolutionary Psychology! Here you can make sweeping generalizations about human prehistory based on no actual evidence. So you see back in the day when men hunted and women gathered--you know that precise period from like a million years ago to yesterday--humans didn't sleep next to each other. How do I know? Because it would have been maladaptive to, because you know, "not sleeping together" was selected for its fitness advantage .... So, therefore, our modern sleeping together doesn't comport well with our Pleistocene, cave men genes. QED. Now give me a grant and publish my research in your newspaper.
Posted by: Jonathan | Jan 24, 2010 2:53:44 PM
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