Men sleep better beside mate; women worse - MSNBC

For the study, Austrian researchers asked 10 committed couples, ages 21 to 31, to wear a small device called an actigraph on their wrists while they slept at home. An actigraph, which resembles a wristwatch, keeps track of a person’s movements during the night and chronicles their periods of sleep and wakefulness.

The actigraphs showed that the women’s sleep was more fragmented on nights when they shared a bed, than when they slept alone. The differences weren’t huge, but they were significant.

The researchers speculated that women's fretful sleep might be caused by brain wiring differences between men and women. Women tend to be lighter sleepers because they historically have been the ones caring for infants, the researchers suggested....