Scienceblogtwo

People experience alertness and sleepiness in waves during the course of a day. In reality, a 24-hour regularity of their body temperature governs this experience to some extent. Bioengineers from The University of Texas at Austin have now created a novel mattress and pillow system that employs warmth and cooling to signal the body when it is time to sleep. Sleep is induced when the body temperature dips at night as part of the 24-hour cycle. Due to the stimulation of the new mattress, people may be able to fall asleep more easily and have higher-quality sleep. Shahab Haghayegh, a research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, who oversaw the creation of the mattress at UT Austin while pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, explained that they "facilitate the readiness to fall asleep by manipulating internal body temperature-sensitive sensors to briefly adjust the thermostat of the body so it thinks the temper...