The use of actigraphy revised: the value for clinical practice in insomnia.

Abstract

In the last years, actigraphy has been used more often for clinical research and research evaluation of sleep disorders. Compared to polysomnography, actigraphy is cheap and less time-consuming. Actigraphy provides more objective information about sleep than sleep logs. Although the algorithms to score sleep and wake based on motions measured by actigraphy are still being improved, we believe that the role of actigraphy in the clinical evaluation of sleep in insomnia is limited. Instead of using actigraphy to distinguish a wakeful state from sleep in insomnia, we might better use the activity plots which the actigraph provides to get more insight into the physiological hyperarousal or restfulness of insomnia patients.