When traveling by plane, most airlines will give passengers an eye mask among their little onboard gifts. Considering how tricky it can be to sleep on an airplane filled with dozens of people, the mask helps to block out some of the light and activity. And, as studies now suggest, we should be using eye masks more often as they can greatly improve the effects of sleep.
An experiment was carried out on two groups of participants aged 18-35. The first group included 89 individuals who spent one week sleeping with eye masks and one-week turnout. The other group of 33 partakers slept two nights with a full mask, and two nights sleeping with a mask that had cut-outs over the eye area.
The findings showed that those who slept with the mask completely covering their eyes performed better in cognitive tasks and exhibited more alertness.
It is believed that wearing a mask may have led to increased slow-wave activity which is what helps the brain to encode new information.
“Wearing an eye mask overnight can be an effective and inexpensive solution for improving cognitive performance,” said neuroscientist, Viviana Greco, who authored the study. “Our results speak about improved reaction times and improved memory performance. The implications of our results are significant on many daytime tasks like driving a car or any educational or cultural context that requires learning.”
