The grand majority of sleep research requires that participants spend at least one night and sometimes many nights in a sleep lab hooked up to equipment capturing a wide array of measures including brain and muscle activity, eye and body movements, and respiration. Getting people to come to a sleep lab has several disadvantages. It's inconvenient for individuals who must disrupt their lives to participate and it necessitates sleeping in a strange environment, away from family.
Recently, a number of interesting products have appeared that claim to be able to measure various objective indices related to sleep.
One of the more interesting I've seen is the Somnus night shirt. The shirt uses thin and flexible respiration sensors that have been directly applied to the shirt's fabric. The shirt's developers claim that respiration data are all that's needed to detect whether someone is awake or asleep and their stage of sleep. For example, during REM sleep, respiration is irregular, whereas in non-REM sleep respiration follows a regular pattern.
I've emailed the company to find out more about the shirt, including what studies have been conducted verifying the validity of their claims and the accuracy of the shirt. If they work, such portable, inexpensive devices that can be used by individuals at home opens up many exciting new research and clinical possibilities.
Link to the company's website.
Link to an article about the device in Technology Review.
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