If you’re trying to communicate with a sleeping loved one, you might be better off just speaking normally since Swiss and Austrian researchers discovered that our brains respond to strange voices more than familiar ones.

The enables the brain to coordinate sleep with responding to external inputs.

It is not as straightforward as it appears to get a good night’s sleep. Your brain continuously monitors the environment while you sleep, balancing the urge to protect sleep against the need to wake up.

According to new research published in JNeurosci, one way the brain accomplishes this is by selectively responding to unknown voices over familiar ones.

Sleeping adults’ brain activity was examined in reaction to familiar and new voices by researchers at the University of Salzburg.

When compared to familiar voices, unfamiliar voices triggered more K-complexes, a kind of brain wave connected to sensory perturbations during sleep.

While both familiar and unfamiliar voices can activate K-complexes, only those generated by unknown voices are accompanied by large-scale alterations in brain activity connected to sensory processing.

As the night passed and the voice became more familiar, brain reactions to the strange voice became less frequent, demonstrating that the brain may still learn while sleeping.

These findings show that K-complexes enable the brain to adopt a “sentinel processing mode,” in which it remains awake but can respond to relevant stimuli.

Source: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2524-20.2021

Image Credit: Getty

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