Overview
- University of Pennsylvania scientists monitored 25 healthy adults over seven lab nights under silence, aircraft noise, pink noise, combined noise, and aircraft noise with earplugs.
- Pink noise at 50 decibels was linked to roughly 19 fewer minutes of REM sleep compared with no sound.
- Intermittent aircraft noise reduced deep N3 sleep by about 23 minutes, and the combination of aircraft and pink noise shortened both REM and deep sleep while adding roughly 15 minutes of wake time.
- Earplugs largely prevented the loss of deep sleep from aircraft noise and were associated with better reported sleep quality than nights with noise exposure.
- Authors highlight the widespread nightly use of broadband sleep sounds, call for larger and longer-term studies across populations and noise spectra, and disclose funding from the FAA Office of Environment and Energy via ASCENT.