For women the main thing that wakes them up from sleep is their wailing baby but men can be easily disturbed by a buzzing fly or a car alarm going off nearby.

A study was conducted to examine which sounds most disrupt the usual patterns of activity in the brain and observe a marked difference in the sexes.

It was found that most men are woken up by sounds like the howling of the wind and the sound of a crying baby does not appear even in the top ten sounds that are likely to disturb their slumber according to research commissioned by Lemsip Max All Night Cold & Flu Tablets.

The tests were carried out by experts at research laboratory MindLab as part of their research into the importance of a good night’s sleep.

A sleep environment was recreated for every volunteer before playing the sounds and measuring the results on an EEG by MindLab.

Electroencephalograhy (EEG) is a machine to measure how regular brain activity is disturbed by them.

An alternate research showed that 54 percent women are disturbed by their partner’s snoring and one in ten said that they are woken up by their flat-mates having sex.

29 percent of both men and women accepted that they suffer a disturbed night’s sleep between five to seven nights a week.

Other sounds which disturb both the sexes equally are of drunken rowdiness.