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BBC Radio Cambridgeshire breakfast presenter Jeremy Sallis has unusual sleep patterns. Up at 5.30am, a mid-afternoon nap and tucked up again by 10pm.

I on the other hand have a very simple sleeping pattern. In bed by midnight and then up whenever my body tells me to.

Jez is happy to help

That's why I was slightly apprehensive about joining Jeremy at the  LCG Bioscience sleep clinic in Bourn, knowing that the early riser would be shaking me awake at 5am on the dot.

It turned out that wasn't my only obstacle to a good night's rest. Trying to sleep with nine electrodes stuck to your head is like trying to eat soup with a fork.

The clinic is there to research people's sleep patterns in the hope that the results can help create methods of making life better for folk with sleeping problems.

Electrodes

So, me and Jeremy thought it would be a good idea to take a closer look at some of the work they do - by becoming one of their experiments.

Martin applies some stuff to my head

After a quick tour of the building and visit to our rooms (with freeview telly) we were being hooked up to some fancy equipment which reads every face twitch and scrunch you make during the night.

Martin King is a clinical physiologist at the centre and explained to us what all these wires coming out of our head were doing.

"We're measuring voltages. Sleep is essentially described in the amplitude, how big the signals are. We can visualise all the waves and eye movements and muscle tone."

As soon as Jeremy was hooked up and tucked in I retired to the nurses' station with the team to look at what it was telling us.

Volunteers

Very flat waves implied that our Sleeping Beauty had drifted off almost instantaneously. Bless him, it was after 11pm. But within a few minutes he had awoke from his slumber and performed a frantic re-arranging of his pillows sending the readings all over the place.

It wasn't long though until he was embracing one of his pillows like a cuddly toy and drifting off for the night.

Jez on camera through the sytstem

Needless to say I was not the happiest of bunnies when I received my wake-up call at 5am in the morning, and even less happy to have to scrub sticky gel out of my hair where the electrodes had been zapping my brainwaves.

But it was great to know that this sort of research is being done and in the heart of our county as well - we all know how irritating it is to get a bad night's sleep - imagine if you had that problem every night.

In fact, they're looking for volunteers so if you fancy hooking your head up to a brain reader during your slumber, get in touch with them.