Music facilitates sleep initiation in adults with sleep-onset insomnia: The role of neural synchronization

Abstract

Sleep-onset insomnia is widespread in modern society, and many individuals turn to music to improve their sleep. While clinical studies have shown that music can positively affect sleep quality, the impact on sleep initiation remains unclear. Furthermore, there is limited knowledge on the mechanisms by which music may facilitate sleep. Here, we investigated whether music can facilitate sleep onset and if the effect is related to brain waves synchronizing to the slow beat of the sleep music. We recorded participants with sleep-onset insomnia (N=53) during a 30-minute afternoon rest using electroencephalography (EEG). Participants were randomly divided into two groups. Twenty-four participants listened to music chosen from a sleep music playlist while resting, and 29 rested in silence. We evaluated the transition from wakefulness towards sleep with the delta-alpha ratio of the EEG. To assess neural synchronization to the beat of the music, we used an EEG frequency tagging approach. We found a higher degree of transition towards sleep in the music group compared to silence over the 30-minutes resting period. Furthermore, higher beat stability in the music was reflected in stronger neural frequency tagging at the musical beat. However, the analyses showed no relationship between sleep initiation and neural synchronization to the beat. In sum, our results revealed that music has a positive effect on sleep initiation and that there is neural synchronization to naturalistic sleep music with a steady beat, but we found no indication that this neural synchronization is the central mechanism driving enhanced sleep initiation with music.