That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Sleep Tracking

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

In today's neuroscience bite, we discuss how you can track your sleep at home to improve brain health. 

Hi, my name is Olufkir Gholsan, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. So this byte came from a listener. Remember, you can send me ideas, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com or on threads or X at thatneurosciguy. And I'm not a gadget expert, but the question that came in was, you know, you always talk about how important sleep is for brain health. Well, how do we monitor sleep accurately? And what are, you know, what are, what do you think about the home sleep

solutions that are out there? Well, the reality is the only way to accurately track sleep is through EEG or electroencephalography, uh, your brain waves. So if you went into a sleep lab, they would stick some electrodes on your forehead. And by measuring changes in brain activity, they can, uh, a sleep researcher can tell you which stage of sleep you're in. So typically there's five stages of sleep, although these days there's a bit of a debate and there might only be four. But with a traditional model, you start in stage one sleep, you go down to stage two, stage three, and then stage four. And then you go back up to three or two, maybe even one, and you cycle through the stages of sleep throughout the night. Typically deep sleep, stages three and four, you spend more time in that in the early part

of the night, and then you spend more time in non-REM two and one and REM sleep as the night goes on, and you might even wake up. And we call this the sleep cycle. And the only way to accurately classify the sleep cycle is through EEG or electroencephalography. And there are some home solutions for this. The Muse S, for instance, uses EEG to track your sleep cycle. And there's some other products out there that use EEG as well. I like the Muse S. It's kind of comfortable, but there are other products that you can use. If you're relying on a watch, like an Apple watch,

for instance, basically it's relying on your heart rate and the accelerometer. So it're relying on a watch, like an Apple Watch, for instance, basically it's relying on your heart rate and the accelerometer. So it's relying on changes in your heart rate and emotion to infer stages of sleep. And it's reasonably accurate, but I wouldn't call it the gold standard. All right, now, obviously people at Apple would disagree with me or Google if you're wearing a Google Watch or Garmin. But they're inferring stages of sleep through what we'd call a secondary measure. So if you are relying on these other devices or an Oura Ring, for instance, they're not measuring EEG, which is the only way to truly classify stages of sleep accurately. So if you're really interested in your stages of sleep and you want to have it monitored correctly, you need EEG.

It's not a sales pitch for a Muse S, but that's the reality of the situation. If you are relying on a watch or an Oura Ring, just remember that it's making a best guess, but it might not be 100% accurate. The other thing that's out there is O2 saturation. Typically, you measure oxygen levels when you're concerned about sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is when you stop breathing while you sleep. So if you've ever been tested for sleep apnea, they might put something on your finger that measures the oxygen saturation in the blood. And basically, with sleep apnea, you stop breathing. So your O2 sats drop rapidly, and that's how they diagnose it. But it doesn't give you information about stages of sleep. It's just got to do with your breathing while you're sleeping.

So the reality is, if you're concerned about your sleep, because I've told you that sleep is the single biggest predictor of brain health, which I believe it is, then you need EEG. That's the bottom line. If you want to use a watch or an Oura Ring, it's not a bad thing to do, but just remember, it's a best guess and you can't take it as a gold standard. All right, that's another neuroscience bite. Hopefully you found that useful. My name is Olive Kregolson and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.