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Smart Pajamas Monitor Patients With Sleep Disorder
Hugh Pickens writes "Emily Singer reports in MIT Technology Review that a nightshirt embedded with fabric electronics can monitor user's breathing patterns while a small chip worn in a pocket of the shirt processes that data to determine the phase of sleep, such as REM sleep (when we dream), light sleep, or deep sleep. 'It has no adhesive and doesn't need any special setup to wear,' says Matt Bianchi, a sleep neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-inventor of the shirt. 'It's very easy—you just slip it on at night.' Until now people with sleep disorders were hooked up to a complex array of sensors that monitor brain activity, muscle activity, eye movement, and heart and breathing rate but the 'smart pajamas' simplify this by focusing only on respiration. 'It turns out that you can tell if someone is awake or asleep and which stage of sleep they are in purely based on breathing pattern,' says Bianchi. 'That's a much easier signal to analyze than electrical activity from the brain.' Sleep specialists hope the pj's can help patients with insomnia or other sleep disorders since the shirt allows repeated measurements over time in the home so users can log their habits, such as coffee or alcohol intake, exercise, or stress, and look for patterns in how those variables affect their quality of sleep."
If it can tell if someone is awake or asleep it should have wider application in workplace uniforms.
Sleep Cycle for the iOS does something similar. The alarm clock function to wake you up 'on cycle' is definitely worth the $0.99
Being someone who has been diagnosed with narcolepsy, this would have been so much nicer but you can't get nearly as much data. If you want to tell what stage of sleep someone is in, that's fine, but if you want to diagnose someone, you need to test for everything. I was certainly tested for everything even though I knew what I had based on symptoms (such as falling asleep during SATs despite 6 energy drinks, traffic lights, and talking/listening to people).
Data taken from one source isn't enough to test for every diagnosis. It certainly is more convenient that having at least 20 wires attached with a sticky KY substance though. Basically, if people can sleep with that stuff on, you have a sleeping disorder--worst weekend ever...
From TFA, he was saying that it would be an objective way to measure how much sleep one got for people with insomnia or more importantly the quality of sleep, but I feel like that is about all that it is good for.
I wonder if it can detect wet dreams too...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I wonder if it can detect wet dreams too...
Regular pajamas can do that.
Why is anything that gets electronics embedded into it suddenly called "Smart"? It's a bunch of sensors sewn into PJs.
IBM's Watson approaches "smart". Electronics are actually pretty dumb.
The TI Chronos watch has a TI MSP430 microprocessor development system built into the wristwatch, with RF link, accelerometers, temperature gauge, and other tools, for $50. (The RF link goes to a USB frob you plug into your PC.) You can also link up to a heart-rate sensor belt. I haven't gotten around to using the accelerometer app as a sleep sensor, but that's on my "stuff I plan to do" list.
MSP430 is the same microprocessor family in TI's Launchpad development board (sold for $4.30.) It's not quite as artist-friendly as an Arduino, but if you're already a C programmer it's pretty cool. The processors are 16 bits as opposed to 8, but there's less memory than in Arduino so you have to program a bit closer to the metal.
The Wii Nunchuck has an accelerometer and some buttons. It uses a proprietary connector which turns out to just be an I2C link with funny-shaped jacks, and there's a "Wiichuck" adapter board for about $3-4 at Sparkfun, Adafruit, and similar places which lets you plug that into an Arduino. It costs a few bucks more than a cheap accelerometer (I paid $20 or so for the Nunchuck), but it's a much more convenient format to fit in your bed than an Arduino plus a breadboard. (I stuck the Arduino in a small box at the foot of the bed, with a long USB cable to power it and upload the data to my laptop.)
An Android phone can be a bit cheaper than an iPhone, and they've all got accelerometers these days.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This isn't foolproof. I meditate and can relax myself to the point of machines that detect breathing patterns will say I am asleep but I am wide awake and totally aware of my surroundings. It is a nice step in the right direction though!