Abstract
Recent research has shown that auditory closed-loop stimulation can enhance sleep slow oscillations (SO) to improve N3 sleep quality and cognition. Previous studies have been conducted in lab environments. The present study aimed to validate and assess the performance of a novel ambulatory wireless dry-EEG device (WDD), for auditory closed-loop stimulation of SO during N3 sleep at home. The performance of the WDD to detect N3 sleep automatically and to send auditory closed-loop stimulation on SO were tested on 20 young healthy subjects who slept with both the WDD and a miniaturized polysomnography (part 1) in both stimulated and sham nights within a double blind, randomized and crossover design. The effects of auditory closed-loop stimulation on delta power increase were assessed after one and 10 nights of stimulation on an observational pilot study in the home environment including 90 middle-aged subjects (part 2).The first part, aimed at assessing the quality of the WDD as compared to a polysomnograph, showed that the sensitivity and specificity to automatically detect N3 sleep in real-time were 0.70 and 0.90, respectively. The stimulation accuracy of the SO ascending-phase targeting was 45 ± 52°. The second part of the study, conducted in the home environment, showed that the stimulation protocol induced an increase of 43.9% of delta power in the 4 s window following the first stimulation (including evoked potentials and SO entrainment effect). The increase of SO response to auditory stimulation remained at the same level after 10 consecutive nights. The WDD shows good performances to automatically detect in real-time N3 sleep and to send auditory closed-loop stimulation on SO accurately. These stimulation increased the SO amplitude during N3 sleep without any adaptation effect after 10 consecutive nights. This tool provides new perspectives to figure out novel sleep EEG biomarkers in longitudinal studies and can be interesting to conduct broad studies on the effects of auditory stimulation during sleep.
Highlights
Sleep is a complex process that plays a key role in maintaining homeostasis, well-being and overall health (Tononi and Cirelli, 2003; Besedovsky et al, 2012; Irish et al, 2015)
The present research aimed to assess the performances of the wireless dry-EEG device (WDD), an ambulatory dry-electrodes EEG device, for auditory closed-loop stimulation of slow oscillations (SO) during N3 sleep in the home environment
With a good ability to detect N3 sleep in real time and a precise algorithm for auditory closed-loop stimulation (45 ± 52◦ reached on average for a 45◦ targeting)
Summary
Sleep is a complex process that plays a key role in maintaining homeostasis, well-being and overall health (Tononi and Cirelli, 2003; Besedovsky et al, 2012; Irish et al, 2015). In recent decades, increasing evidence has confirmed that slow-wave sleep (SWS) had a major impact in many biological functions such as glucose metabolism, hormone release, immunity, and memory (Van Cauter et al, 1997; Born, 2010; Xie et al, 2013; Varin et al, 2015; Besedovsky et al, 2017) This proposed role for SWS, coupled with observations of impaired SWS in several chronic pathologies such as fibromyalgia (Lentz et al, 1999), as well as in aging (Van Cauter et al, 1997; Scullin, 2012), have led to imagine the development of methods that could enhance SWS (see Bellesi et al, 2014 for Review). Vestibular stimulation (Bayer et al, 2011) and auditory stimulation appeared to be effective in increasing the magnitude of SO (Ngo et al, 2013, 2015; Oudiette et al, 2013; Cox et al, 2014; Ong et al, 2016; Leminen et al, 2017; Papalambros et al, 2017)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
