4 ms·

What to watch for in the sleep space?

pedalpete 1y ago
There's a lot of nuance that you kind of learn to sniff out. I've seen studies that claim data from a nap is as good as data from sleep. Sham's that don't compare the stimulation, for example how long it takes to fall asleep with stimulation AND the sound of waves compared to just silence. What happened to just the sound of waves? What data is thrown out? We've seen studies which looks like the data which was removed didn't match the thesis. For example, when measuring how long it took a person to fall asleep, if they fell asleep too quickly in the sham condition, the data wasn't included, because they didn't have difficulty falling asleep. But a big one I look for to clarify this is "why"? Why do we think this might work? What's the mechanism through which this is acting. Even if it isn't 100% known, at least postulate as to why we think the body would respond in this manner. With slow-wave enhancement, the theory is that we are triggering a protective mechanism in the brain, and in response the brain increases slow-wave activity. We see this clearly and immediately in EEG data right after stimulation, and for a few seconds after. We compare a 5-stim on/5 stim off within night stimulation condition. I will admit that one of the challenges in sleep studies is that sleep is influenced by so many factors, and it isn't the same each night. Even with controls in place, this is VERY difficult to control for. It is one of the reasons, as engineers, we like the stimulation we are working with. We can see the immediate brain response, and the research has shown the downstream neurological/biological/physiological responses as a result. Sometimes measured in real-time, such as cortisol and HRV, but when that is not available, next day responses. The challenge to what we do is that the technology is difficult to implement, and the studies clearly show researchers struggling with this. I wrote about it in our blog post about Beyond Cherry Picking (https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/beyond-cherry-picking-making-sense-of-mixed-results-in-sleep-research https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/beyond-cherry-picking-m...)

There's a lot of nuance that you kind of learn to sniff out. I've seen studies that claim data from a nap is as good as data from sleep. Sham's that don't compare the stimulation, for example how long it takes to fall asleep with stimulation AND the sound of waves compared to just silence. What happened to just the sound of waves? What data is thrown out? We've seen studies which looks like the data which was removed didn't match the thesis. For example, when measuring how long it took a person to fall asleep, if they fell asleep too quickly in the sham condition, the data wasn't included, because they didn't have difficulty falling asleep. But a big one I look for to clarify this is "why"? Why do we think this might work? What's the mechanism through which this is acting. Even if it isn't 100% known, at least postulate as to why we think the body would respond in this manner. With slow-wave enhancement, the theory is that we are triggering a protective mechanism in the brain, and in response the brain increases slow-wave activity. We see this clearly and immediately in EEG data right after stimulation, and for a few seconds after. We compare a 5-stim on/5 stim off within night stimulation condition. I will admit that one of the challenges in sleep studies is that sleep is influenced by so many factors, and it isn't the same each night. Even with controls in place, this is VERY difficult to control for. It is one of the reasons, as engineers, we like the stimulation we are working with. We can see the immediate brain response, and the research has shown the downstream neurological/biological/physiological responses as a result. Sometimes measured in real-time, such as cortisol and HRV, but when that is not available, next day responses. The challenge to what we do is that the technology is difficult to implement, and the studies clearly show researchers struggling with this. I wrote about it in our blog post about Beyond Cherry Picking (https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/beyond-cherry-picking-making-sense-of-mixed-results-in-sleep-research https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/beyond-cherry-picking-m...)