Here’s what happens in your brain when you wake up during the night

Most of us wake up a few times during the night, and scientists might just have figured out why.

Researchers writing in Science Advances say that the wakeful periods – usually lasting between a few seconds and a minute – are to do with the activity of ‘resting’ brain cells.

Sometimes random ‘noise’ in these cells causes people to wake up.

It seems to be affected by temperature, with ‘neuronal noise’ less likely to cause periods of wakefulness at higher temperatures, at least in zebrafish (whose sleep works in a similar way to human infants, the researchers say).

The finding could have an important impact on our understanding of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) with children possibly more likely to sleep through dangerous incidents if the room is warm.

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Speaking to IFLScience, co-author Ronny Bartsch from Bar-Ilan University in Israel said, ‘Sleep arousals can last on the order of a second to a minute. Usually they are quite short, and you won’t remember them in the morning. The problem is when they get too long, you start to wake up and do other things.

‘We came up with this hypothesis that arousals during sleep are from neuronal noise from brain neurons.’

The study could lead to new sleeping pills which reduce ‘neuronal noise’ – and possibly new ways to counter sudden infant death syndrome.