Abstracts

Abstract

Throughout the history of empirical sleep and dream research there has been the methodological problem of quantifying the structure of sleep in a natural home setting. The golden standard to be followed has been the polysomnogram (PSG), the practical usefulness of which, despite its high reliability and validity, has been hindered by e.g. the slowness of data gathering, the number of nights spent at the sleep laboratory and the discomfort caused to the participants, high financial costs, and before all the effect of the laboratory environment on the ecological validity of the structure of sleep and content of dreams. The demand for novel, home-based, cost-effective and accurate measures for sleep and dream research is acute, which can be observed in the recent growing interest into commercially available devices that measure sleep activity in real-world environments. After the cessation of production of Zeo sleep monitor in 2013, there no longer is an affordable, easy-to-use portable brainwave mapping system validated against a PSG on the market. This presentation will present the results from comparing the “brain-sensing headband” Muse (InterAxon) and the offbody ballistocardiography (BCG) measuring device Beddit against laboratory PSG data for the validity of their sleep stage differentiation. The applicability and usefulness of these novel methods will be discussed.