Auditory countermeasures for sleep inertia

Sleep inertia is a decline in cognition many people experience upon and following awakening. Auditory alarms are frequently employed as a waking device in social, professional, and emergency situations. Recent research suggests that preferred popular music may have the capacity to counteract sleep inertia, however due to the complexity of musical compositions, the quality and elemental factors required to produce effective stimuli is unknown. Understanding these elements can potentially improve alarm design for a variety of applications. In my Thesis, I developed remote testing applications to formally investigate the capacity for sound to counteract sleep inertia in natural settings and enable the analyses of key musical elements including melody and rhythm. I showed that sound perceived as melodic, regardless of sound type or genre, reveals a significant relationship to reports of reductions in perceived sleep inertia for people awakening from nocturnal sleep in their natural environments. This knowledge permits the design of custom alarm stimuli through which I formally show that a melodic sound treatment significantly improves participant vigilance compared to a non-melodic counterpart in ecological conditions. Taken together, these results highlight the potential importance of musical melody in waking sound design as an agent to counteract sleep inertia and thus improve participant performance upon waking. The research more broadly emphasizes the possibility for such elements of stimulus design to be applied in a variety of important applications. I review and discuss the new findings in relation to what is known for auditory countermeasures for sleep inertia, opportunities for future research, and potential implications for industry and the general public.