The richest alarm clock
2005/06/12 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia
A group of young Americans has invented a friendly wake-up call to sleep with great softness. These young people discover that people hate the alarm clock. And it is that no one likes anyone or nothing to say when he sleeps deeply. Some believe it happens to them because they have not slept enough, but it is not. In principle it has nothing to do with the number of sleeping hours, but with the moment of sleep in which they wake up.
In fact, the dream is divided into several phases. In a first phase, the body adapts to sleep: the muscles loosen, the activity of the brain decreases and the breathing becomes deeper. This phase is short, lasts about ten minutes.
The second phase is of transition. The first is long and especially deep. Phases 3 and 4 are similar to those of the second and last about an hour each. In all of them, hard stimuli are necessary to awaken the asleep.
The last phase is audition, especially since a musical group chose this name for the group. It is the REM phase. RAP means Rapid eye moviment, the rapid movement of the eyes, referring to one of the characteristics of the phase. In addition, dreams are produced in the REM phase. Even though we do not remember the dreams the next morning, we always sleep in dreams, and that is clear when someone wakes up in the REM phase: his dream will remain alive to the point of not being able to distinguish between dream and truth.
These five phases are consecutive and are repeated cyclically. Each cycle lasts an hour and a half or more. So every night we have four or five cycles. Thus, although we seem to have slept eight hours in a row, we have always awakened between 6 and 8 times. Yes, those awakenings are very short, less than thirty seconds, and often go unnoticed. On the other hand, the cycles are not the same during the night: at first it sleeps more deeply and in the second half the REM phases are more frequent.
Kindly wake-up calls
Young people at the Axon Sleep research laboratory know the phases of sleep well. And they have invented an alarm clock based on them. The alarm clock consists of two parts: the clock itself and a tape that must be placed on the head. The Xingola has several sensors that collect the waves emitted by the brain when we sleep. Thanks to this, you know in what phase of sleep you are in every moment.
From there, the responsibility is for the alarm clock. He chooses when to awaken the sleeping person and for it first you have to put it at the time it suits to wake up. Just like any other alarm clock. However, it will not touch that hour, but it is in light sleep, close to that hour. That is, analyzing the cycle, the alarm clock program chooses when to say loti, respecting your sleep, but ensuring it will be before the set time.
How much would I buy?
Axon Sleep believes it is the best way to wake up. But there is more than one who will not act too soon. Or, at least, if the loti will not seem too soon. It seems that the researchers themselves have doubts about their acceptance in the market. Because they ask for help on their website to choose the selling price. They offer three options: $149, $199 or $249. One must be chosen to indicate that we would not pay more.
How much would you pay? If everything said by inventors is true, the alarm clock will never be too expensive. Because sleeping well and having a good day has no price. And they claim that waking up with this alarm clock, one is smarter, crazy and happier than if not. I don't know if it will be so big, but you can't deny that many have happened to us the opposite because they have awakened us at an inappropriate time, so they don't lack reason.
Other options
However, it is not the only alarm clock that gives importance to awakening. Tools that attempt to awaken in a pleasant way have already been invented. For a long time there are radionavegadoras or that launch the music CD. There are others who play with the light: first they light the soft light, little by little they increase the intensity of the light and, finally, they emit the sound, first of soft form and then hard. However, Axon Sleep is the first to take into account sleep cycles. We will see his success. I, at least, will try to sleep well… and wake up even better.
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