Sharing your bed makes men dull

New Delhi: Sharing a bed with another person makes men dull, latest research published in the New Scientist journal says.

When men spend the night in the same bed with someone else their sleep patterns are disturbed, even if they do not have sex. This leads to poorer performance in intelligence tests the next day, UK’s Daily Mail newspaper said quoting an Austrian scientist’s research.

Women, too, get disturbed sleep if they share a bed, but their mental ability is not affected. Professor Gerhard Kloesch of the University of Vienna and his team used eight young unmarried, childless couples for the study.

The couples were asked to spend 10 nights sleeping apart and 10 together while Kloesch monitored their rest patterns at night through wrist monitors and sleep diaries.

The next day the couples were given mental ability tests. Even without having sex, everyone had more disturbed sleep when sharing a bed than alone but the effects of this on the brain only affected the men.

According to the journal: "Lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day."

However women seemed to show no such ill-effects even if their sleep was just as disturbed. The researchers found women were more refreshed than men even when they slept the same number of hours and so concluded they must sleep more deeply.

The finding suggests that if a man has an important day ahead he would be best to head off to the spare room to sleep rather than sharing the marital bed.

The study also found sharing a bed can impact on dreams. Typically women remembered more of their dreams after sleeping alone while men recalled the most after sex.