As sleep-deprived college students, we probably all know the
feeling of waking up in the morning and feeling even more tired than night
before. Or the groggy and confused feeling of when your blaring alarm clock
interrupts your deepest sleep or a good dream. Why is waking up in the morning
so difficult?
It doesn't need to be. The truth is, the ease of waking up all
comes down to timing. If you are in a heavy slumber, it makes sense that you
will feel exhausted when you wake up. When you are in a light sleep, you wake
up feeling rested. The difference is huge.
The problem is that our automated alarm clock set for 8:25 am has no idea how we are
sleeping when it goes off.
Enter Sleep Cycle alarm clock, an extremely exciting app on
the Smart Phone! Sleep cycle alarm clock tracks your sleeping patterns, and
when it senses that you are in a light sleep, it goes off. The mechanism comes from the science of sleep.
While sleeping, we go through various cycles of sleep states. The first phase
of the sleep cycle is light sleep, followed by deep sleep and REM-sleep, which
is the dream state. A full cycle lasts approximately 90 minutes, and depending
on how much sleep you give yourself, will be repeated numerous times throughout
the night.
The above graph shows regular sleep patterns
Movements vary with each phase of the sleep cycle. Sleep Cycle
comes with two motion detection modes, or forms of input. One is the built-in
microphone. Using sound analysis that uses the phone’s built-in microphone as input
to identify sleep states by tracking movements in bed. The other option is the
accelerometer, which uses motion detection of the phone to analyze your
movements as you sleep. Sleep Cycle uses
a user-input wake phase of 30 minutes, which ends at the desired alarm time. During
this phase, Sleep Cycle monitors signals from your body to gently wake you up,
while you are in the lightest possible sleep. A sleep graph that has been generated over the night is then output for the user.
The link to computer
science here is clear. The app was programmed using while-loops, for-loops, and
Boolean statements. It uses our motion, sensed by the microphone and
accelerometer, as input data to the phone. The data is then computed by the
algorithm that the program is designed to run. When it is time to wake-up, the
app senses the users motion to find the best time, and then sets off the alarm
when the user is sleeping lightest. The app then outputs a graph of sleep
patterns and overall sleep quality. If you're looking to wake up feeling refreshed, I recommend downloading this app and trying it out. It has worked wonders for me!
Reference:
This is a great post!! I love this app. To measure each sleep cycle, scientists quantify sleep by "polysomnography" which stands for poly="many," somnus="sleep," graphein="to write." It has a series of electrodes which could measure cortical brain activity and pick up the voltage fluctuations in ionic current flow across the particular area of neurons. The output can be analyzed into four stages of sleep: three non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stages (N1, N2, N3), and REM. N1 is the traditionally referred light sleep. Check more here on this website if you are interested: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-babble/201310/sleep-cycle-app-precise-or-placebo
ReplyDeleteI had no idea how seemingly easy it is to track your body's sleep cycle! This makes sense because generally, if I go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, I feel more well rested than if my sleep patterns are variable. It is so cool how computer scientists took advantage of this knowledge of sleep cycles to create an app that can affect a user's energy levels during the day.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I've always wondered how these apps function; how they are able to detail a sleep cycle and predict when people should fall asleep in order to get a sufficient night's rest. I really like how you explained such a seemingly complicated application by showing how they used topics that we learned in class. If more applications were made like this, people would live a healthier life.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting article! There have been so many times when I've woken up feeling horrible and other times when I've woken up feeling amazing and it's awesome to know that technology has a way to regulate that.
ReplyDelete