How New Wearable Tech Targets Brain Waves for Better Sleep
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Getting artificial intelligence right isn't just about code, it's about cost and value. Join IBM at the break to hear how to measure the ROI of AI with Manish Goyal, VP and Senior Partner of AI and Analytics at IBM Consulting. Do you find it hard to fall asleep? If you do, you're not alone. Roughly 46 million Americans say they have trouble nodding off, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Have you tried lowering the room temperature? Doing breathing exercises? Sticking to a schedule? Turning the lights off earlier? Stretching before bed? Not eating before bed? Quitting coffee? Aromatherapy? Drinking warm milk? Listening to whale songs? Well, if none of those help, turns out there's tech for that. Sleep tech isn't new. Apps like Headspace and Calm have libraries of exercises and guided meditations that aim to help users fall asleep.

There are trackers that help you use your data to plan for better sleep. There are mattresses that heat, cool, raise, and lower your body to help you find your optimal sleep position and temperature. But what if this still isn't enough to calm your racing mind and convince your body and brain that it's time to sleep?

From the Wall Street Journal, this is the future of everything. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg. Today, I'm talking to WSJ Science Bureau Chief Joe Craven-McGinty about new wearable sleep devices that target the brain with both sound and light to improve our sleep. A good night's rest after the break. Neuroscientists have been studying brainwave modulation for a decade or more.

I spoke with our Science Bureau Chief, Joe Craven-McGinty, about how sound is being used to modulate our brainwaves in the name of better sleep. We started by talking about how this typically works. Basically, it disrupts the pattern. So brainwaves are oscillations, and the oscillations occur at different frequencies depending on whether you're awake or whether you're asleep.

When you're awake, your brainwaves oscillate at about 8 to 12 hertz, which is to say 8 or 12 oscillations per second. Whoa. Yeah. When you're in the deepest phase of sleep, which is called slow-wave sleep, not surprisingly, the brainwaves slow down to about 0.5 hertz.

to 2 hertz, or as few as one oscillation every two seconds. And we sort of just stay that way the whole night? No. There are four phases of sleep, and you cycle through those four phases of sleep. And the final phase is REM sleep, which we all know is when we tend to have dreams that we remember. Let's get into some of the companies you spoke with that are developing this wearable sleep tech.

One is called Ellamind. What are researchers there doing? Ellamind is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts by some MIT professors and other professors. They have one of the newest, possibly the newest, wearable sleep aid on the market.

It is a headband that fits around your forehead like a sweatband would. Okay. Yeah, it's made of a soft material, and it houses five EEG sensors and a tiny speaker that delivers bursts of sound at specified times during the oscillation pattern of your brainwaves. Where's the speaker? The speaker's right in the middle of your forehead.

Okay, okay. Those sounds are designed to do what with my brainwaves? The sounds are intended to disrupt the waking brainwave pattern and move you more rapidly to the sleeping brainwave pattern. It has EEG sensors and it tries to sort of nudge my brainwaves or the user's brainwaves one way or another. How does it do that?

So the sound pulses are delivered at a specific point in the oscillation. The device delivers about 15,000 pulses in 30 minutes, which is about 10 per second. And it's timed very specifically. Now, they don't like to discuss exactly where in the pattern the stimulation occurs, but that's very important to how it shifts the oscillation to where they're trying to get it.

How do they know when to play it? That's where the EEG comes into it. So the EEG is actually measuring your personal brainwave pattern. Got it. What does this sound sound like? It sounds like a sprinkler. So it's... Ellemind sent us an example of what the sounds like. I have to say, hearing that, what is it, 15,000 times in 30 minutes? Yes.

That doesn't sound very restful. In fact, in the beta testing, a lot of the participants said exactly that. They didn't enjoy that sound. And so the company, to compensate, plays a soothing rainfall sound in the background to mask the less soothing sound of the pulses that are actually helping you.

So I get a rain and sprinklers. That's right. Lots of water. So explain the process to me. You go to bed and you put this on your head. That's right. And you close your eyes.

Yes. And it immediately starts doing this, or...? There's a button. You turn it on, and it operates for the 30 minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes, you have the option to remove the headband or to wear it throughout the night. If you wear it throughout the night, you might...

wake up and feel like you wanted to use the device again, and you would just push the button and restart it. If you don't wake up, it will just continue to collect your brainwave data. And this data can be shared with the company, or you can opt out. If you share the data, it can be returned to you if you're interested in tracking your sleep patterns over time. Okay, that's an option. Are there any side effects?

There are no known side effects in healthy individuals. However, these devices are new, and there are also no long-term studies of devices that are worn on a daily basis over time. Researchers aren't expecting there to be any harmful side effects, but the studies don't really exist at this stage. Okay. So far, they think it's safe, though. Yes. What about the price tag?

$350 to $400. In the case of Alamine, you can just buy the device and be done. Or you can choose to also subscribe. You get additional benefits if you subscribe. I think, for example, you might choose a different soothing sound than rainfall. That's how you get your data returned to you if you want to track your sleep patterns over time. But you don't have to purchase that subscription plan. Other devices, the subscription is optional.

built-in thing. You buy the device and you need the subscription. So other brands. You also looked at a product called Somni. Can you tell me about this company and this product?

Somni is very similar. It's produced by a company called Stem Science. It's also a headband. It also seeks to disrupt the brainwave pattern in order to help you fall asleep more quickly, sleep more soundly, sleep longer through the night. The main difference is rather than using an audio stimulation, they use an electrical pulse. It's an electrical stimulation. So no sound? No sound. Well, that's not quite true.

The device plays soothing music, but that's just for pleasure. The thing that helps you sleep is the electrical pulse. There's no sprinkler, like it's an electrical pulse and still acting on my brainwaves. You might feel some tingling and some warmth. How effective is the Somni? So both Elamine and Somni have conducted tests on the effectiveness of their products and

Their studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals. The Somni device, on average, allowed participants to sleep about 22 minutes longer. The Elamine device, on average, helped participants fall asleep about 10 minutes sooner. Okay. Okay. I'll take the extra sleep. How much would the extra sleep cost me if I had the Somni device?

The Somni is about 400. Also comparable. Ballpark, ballpark, yeah. We're going to take a break, but when we come back, we move from sound to light. Getting artificial intelligence right isn't just about code. It's about cost and value. Join IBM at the break to hear how to measure the ROI of AI with Manish Goyal, VP and Senior Partner of AI and Analytics at IBM Consulting.

All right, so Sleep Tech is not only using sound to help us fall asleep faster and get more restful night's sleep, but there's also a company that's using light. How does this work?

So this is a little bit different. The company is Lumos, and it produces a sleep mask. So instead of a headband that fits across your forehead, this is a traditional-looking sleep mask that covers your eyes. This one is delivering light, and the light occurs and flashes during sleep.

your sleep in order to change your circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is basically your body's 24-hour clock. It's the thing that tells you to sleep when it's dark and to wake up when it's light. If you're traveling, as we all have experienced, and you are suddenly in a different time zone, your circadian clock has not adjusted and you have jet lag. So the Lumos Sleep Mask

moves you into a new time zone. How fast could it possibly do that? They say overnight. So I could take a flight from here to Australia, where the time difference is like 16 hours, and sleep one night with Lumos.

And be fine the next day? When I spoke to Bi-Chuan Luo, the CEO and co-founder of Lumos, she was just wrapping up her first study. She did say that the participants said that they slept better, felt more refreshed, and more rested after having used the mask. And that it did successfully move them to the new time zone. This seems like a pretty...

specific use case, though, for people dealing with jet lag? Is that the only target audience for this kind of product? It's not. Her research was inspired by a Stanford professor who's been studying light stimulation and the effect on the circadian rhythms for probably 20 years. His most recent research is aimed at helping sleep-deprived teenagers get to bed earlier and

Oh. Yeah. But for Lumos, Lumos also has a second application. The Department of Defense had seen the Lumos prototype and was impressed enough that they awarded the company a $2.1 million grant to expand beyond jet lag to also include shift workers. So people who work third shift, they're up at night sleeping during the day.

Does it work the same way it would for jet lag for third shift workers? It works the same way. So you answer a series of questions when you're programming your Lumos face mask. Put the mask on. You wear it throughout the night. The light is delivered at a specific time based on your answers to those questions. So it works exactly the same. It's just that if you need to wake up at midnight,

and go to sleep at 8 a.m. the next day, the program is adjusted to flash the light at the time that would influence your circadian rhythm to move it to that time frame.

Why does it have to be on your face? I'm thinking about sunrise alarms like the Hatch Restore or the Weem. Those use light to wake you and even have light programs to help you sort of prepare to go to sleep. Why make Lumos a mask? One, just convenience. It doesn't have to be a mask. Jamie Zeitzer, the Stanford professor who's researched in this area for some time, he uses Lumos.

freestanding lights in his current study for teenagers. But if anyone else were in the room, they would be getting that burst of light too. With a mask, it's delivered just to the wearer. So it's convenient and it doesn't affect others who may be in the room. Yeah, and especially jet lag, you're traveling. I'm not going to like bring the whole lighting crew with me. There's that too. On my theoretical trip to Australia. Okay, Lumos, what's the price tag?

About $250. Okay, so it's cheaper than the other two. It is. Let's say, theoretically, I don't want to pay for these things, Joe. You did a lot of reporting. You spoke to a lot of people. Any tried and true methods that are not going to cost me upwards of $200? Yes. I spoke to Martin Dressler, a sleep researcher in the Netherlands, and he's interesting because he uses the wearable devices in his own research.

But he also says there are plenty of things that you can do that cost nothing that will help you sleep better. Go to sleep in a dark room. Make sure it's quiet. And try to get over the stressful moments of your day. Just let it go. I mean, I could also just listen to the soothing tones of your voice. That works. That was Joe Craven McGinty, our Science Bureau Chief. Joe, thanks for chatting with me. Thank you for having me.

The Future of Everything is a production of The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by me, Charlotte Gartenberg. Michael LaValle and Jessica Fenton are our sound designers and wrote our theme music. Catherine Millsap is our supervising producer. Like the show? Tell your friends. And leave us a five-star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening. There's more to calculating the ROI of AI than the upfront technology costs. Here's Manish Goyal from IBM Consulting again.

When you look at the landscape of what goes into actually building a solution, the AI model by itself is a tiny piece and you've got all the stuff surrounding it. Whether that is the data collection pieces to it, the serving infrastructure, the monitoring, the people that are needed. So you want to be looking at what does it take to get a solution into production and what is the value of that solution overall.

And that solution may have some AI here, some human here, some automation elsewhere. That's the workflow that you're trying to optimize. And the ROI of that optimization is what you need to be measuring at the end of the day from an enterprise perspective. Learn more about IBM's artificial intelligence consulting services at ibm.com slash consulting.