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A good night’s sleep is one of the most rejuvenating, restorative, and healthful things in the world. It is truly vital to life.
Unfortunately, for a large number of people in the world a good night’s sleep is hard to come by. Luckily, scientists at MIT devised a wearable headband that uses acoustic stimulation to help people sleep.
Noise-cancelation for the brain
According to the MIT study published in Nature: Scientific Reports, insufficient sleep can be detrimental to a person’s health. Insomnia has been associated with the risk of premature death and a score of other health issues.
That is where Elemind, a start-up founded by MIT researchers, according to an MIT press release, comes in. The researchers at Elemind devised a wearable EEG headband that uses acoustic stimulation aligned with people’s brainwaves to help them get to sleep.
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Essentially, the wearable device can sense when a person is awake or asleep and uses neuromodulation to impact brainwaves and usher the wearer into sleep. This type of stimulation is called phase-locked. The sound that the device makes triggers a voltage burst in the auditory region of the brain, blocking out other regions. This jams the brain and helps turn-off the areas that are keeping the user from sleeping. It is, in a sense, like noise-cancelation for the brain.
“We wanted to create a non-chemical option for people who wanted to get great sleep without side effects, so you could get all the benefits of natural sleep without the risks,” Meredith Perry, the CEO of Elemind told MIT.
More than sleep
According to InterestingEngineering, the device is a soft, flexible and wearable headband that remains comfortable no matter what position a person sleeps in. In the trial, it helped 76 percent of the participants fall asleep more quickly. But the headband is not classified as a medical device.
The smartphone app also provides users important information about their overall sleep, how long it took for them to fall asleep, duration, as well as how long they stayed in each sleep stage.
This technology could be helpful for more than just sleep, according to the press release.. Elemind is now working in collaboration with eight universities that are researching the device’s effectiveness in preventing tremors, memory formation, the progression of Alzheimer’s, and even more.
Elemind’s headband is truly a breakthrough in sleep and health research. As anyone who has suffered from insomnia can attest to, a lack of sleep can be truly debilitating to the ability to function in day-to-day life, let alone the long-term detrimental effects of too little sleep. Now, hopefully, everyone, everywhere can get enough sleep and approach the day with vigor and energy.
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