Many of us will be waking up earlier to beat the morning rush because we can't roll out of bed and straight into a meeting. Ensuring we are on top of our alarm game is important.
What type of alarm is it that provides the highest level of alert? The same question was posed by Pythagoras around 500 BCE. He believed specific songs that roused the energies had the ability to counteract the feeling of being sleepy.
He seems to have had a point. Research shows that certain alarm sounds can enhance our sleep.
In particular, alarms that have the qualities of "tunefulness" (think "ABC" by The Jackson 5), are great for effective waking.
To understand why this is the case, we need to understand how our brains respond to complex stimuli when we leave the sleep state.
It never feels right to wake up. How we wake up can affect our moods and outlook, as well as our cognitive and mental performance.
grogginess after waking can be dangerous if it reduces our performance in critical decision-making, such as in health settings, emergency responses, security, or while driving.
The state of sleep inertia is referred to as the cognitive state of reduced alertness. It can have serious consequences when performing high-risk tasks, including driving.
Brain scans show that transitioning from sleep to alert does not follow an on/off switch system.
Increased blood flow allocation to the brain is a complex biological process.
Studies show the brain regions important for alert performance take longer to start up than other areas. You can be awake, but not quite.
Blood flow activity within the brain is diminished after waking, according to research.
It is possible that alert wakefulness requires mechanisms that encourage a redistribution of blood flow to the brain.
The stage of sleep at the time is one of the factors that influences wakefulness. If you wake up from a light sleep, you are less likely to feel sleepy.
A light sleep stage is characterized by a lack of activity in the brain and can be associated with feeling sleepy.
Delta wave frequencies are associated with unconsciousness in deep sleep or slow-wave sleep. This is the most difficult stage to wake up from.
The effectiveness of the alarm depends on the age. Young adults need louder alarms than older people, and preteens need an even greater threshold.
You may need an alarm that is 20 decibels louder at 18 than at 80.
What is the best alarm to use? There is growing evidence that different alarm sounds can affect human performance.
A systematic review published in 2020 shows that the pitch of the sound is better at arousing young children than it is older children.
It is assumed the same alarm types would be beneficial, but there is no research to say whether this applies to adults.
Voice notifications such as a person yelling work better than higher frequencies. Similar to those in most mobile phones, they are not as effective.
Our research explores how melody plays a role in encouraging alert wakefulness.
We found that the way in which people interpret their alarms reflects how they feel after waking.
People who use alarms with a tune that they can hum along to will experience lessogginess than people who use a standard alarm.
When compared to standard beeping alarms, we developed a custom rhythmic melody that led to significantly better performance upon and after waking.
Other studies have found that popular music is good to counteract sleep inertia after a short nap, and even more so if it is music the listener personally enjoys.
What does this mean for the day? We believe the perfect alarm must sound like this.
The alarm must be louder for younger people.
Since research in this area is relatively new, more work is needed if we consider the default alarms available on our devices. With time, we think the availability of custom alarm downloads will increase.
Specific designs have been modeled on the latest research to not only encourage arousal but also provide increased alertness, which is why most pre-loaded alarms will wake you.
Adrian Dyer is an Associate Professor at RMIT University.
This article is free to use under a Creative Commons license. The original article is worth a read.
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