Neuroscientists confirm this common bedtime routine greatly improves sleep
Reading a book in bed has been shown to improve sleep for more people than going straight to lights-out. That simple habit engages memory, language, and emotion systems at once, and that steady focus can ease the move into sleep. During December 2019, 991 adults joined an online trial that assigned bedtime reading or no reading. Sleep improved for 42% of readers versus 28% of nonreaders. The study was led by Dr. Elaine Finucane at University of Galway in Ireland. Finucane kept the test close to real life, so participants used their own books and their own bedrooms. Self-reported sleep is not a brain scan, but the result flags a bedtime window worth taking seriously. Brain links linger Brain scans show that reading can echo after the last page, especially when the routine repeats nightly. In one study, evening novel readers showed higher connectivity between brain regions the next morning than before the reading began. Those changes reflected neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to...
