Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/5ERcQDoWI9A   Waking to a melody versus a jarring buzzer is significantly more likely to erase that groggy feeling from the first part of your day.  This conclusion stems from a study just published by communication scientists at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.   Fifty participants were surveyed for their preferred type of morning alarm sounds.  The tabulated results revealed that musical alarms more efficiently erased sleep inertia than either the annoying beep or buzz.  Waking to harsh sounds disturbs normal and effective brain function impairing your performance for up to 4 hours.   Quickly suspending sleep inertia is critical for certain professions including police, firefighters, pilots, commercial drivers, nurses, and doctors.     Stuart J. McFarlane, Jair E. Garcia, Darrin S. Verhagen, Adrian G. Dyer. Alarm tones, music and their elements: Analysis of reported waking sounds to counteract sleep inertia. PLOS ONE, 2020; 15 (1): e0215788 DOI: 10.1371/journal