For a long time we have known that our bodies absolutely need 7-9 hours of sleep per night to awaken feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead. This however seems to be achieved less often with people sacrificing their sleep to spend more time at work, or to work through a Netflix series until the early hours of the morning. It is easy to tell someone to “get more sleep”, but the likelihood of people taking this advice into consideration is normally quite low. This requires specialists of sleep health to conjure intuitive ideas to help boost people’s sleep quality independent of their time spent asleep… enter SmartSleep.
SmartSleep is a wearable headband device that has been shown to increase slow wave activity in the brain during deeper stages of sleep. Increases to slow wave activity are achieved via acoustic stimulation provided by the headband wearable, which emits auditory tones that mimic the brain activity and help to enhance the slow wave activity when in the deepest stage of sleep. Due to the importance of slow wave activity as a restorative element of sleep that is “essential for cortical reorganisation and cognitive function”, SmartSleep has imminent potential to provide sleep enhancement without prolonging sleep time.
The wearable device has demonstrated its ability to increase slow wave activity during slow wave sleep stages by 12.3% when worn for one-night. This boost in slow wave activity corresponded with subsequent improvements in performance with letter and category fluency, working memory and overall executive function. These enhanced daytime functions in the research were closely attributed to the increase in slow wave activity provided by the acoustic stimulation of the SmartSleep headband.
Although not yet available on the Australian consumer market, usage by the American population has shown promise for this device to be an invaluable utility in optimising our sleep quality overnight, translating to improved performance during the day. SmartSleep is the first device of its kind to embrace sleep quality over quantity.
References
- Diep, C., Ftouni, S., Manousakis, J., Drummond, S., Nicholas, C., Anderson, C. (2018). Executive function improves following acoustic slow wave sleep enhancement with a novel, automated device. Journal of Sleep Research, Vol. 27, Issue S2.
- Kinonklijke Philips N.V. (2018). SmartSleep. Philips SmartSleep at: https://www.philips.com/c-e/ifa/products/smartsleep-sleep-better.html.
