Sleep & delta waves
How deeply you sleep shows up in your brainwaves
myWaves works from delta waves, the slow waves of deep sleep. Here is what is known, and what is not.
Delta waves
The slow waves of deep sleep
A sleeping brain repeats a set rhythm through the night. The deepest stage of that cycle produces large, low-frequency waves: delta waves. Together with sleep spindles and gamma oscillations, they have been studied as characteristic sleep rhythms for decades.
Delta waves appear mostly in the first half of the sleep cycle. That is why a night where you struggled to settle, or woke repeatedly, still gives a usable recording.
And the shape of those waves differs from person to person. That individual variation is what makes a personalised sound possible at all.
Mechanism
Three steps from brainwave to sound
Record, convert, play. That is the whole of what myWaves does.
- 01
Record
Sleep EEG is recorded from the frontal lobe of the forehead using gel electrode pads. The data conforms to EDF, the international standard format.
- 02
Convert
Noise is stripped from the delta waves, and a patented process called neuro-acoustic transduction converts their characteristics into corresponding sound-wave patterns.
- 03
Play
You listen to the resulting sound for thirty minutes as you fall asleep. The clinical study confirmed that someone else's sound does not produce the effect.
What is and is not known
Why it works is not yet fully understood
We will not blur this. The results were observed; the mechanism is still being researched.
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The resonance hypothesis
One possibility is a form of resonance: a sound that shares the dynamics of your own brain rhythms may assist sleep. Neuroscientists and the clinical investigators alike are clear that the exact mechanism is not yet fully understood.
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An anatomical route
There is a known direct connection from the auditory cortex to the brainstem centres that regulate sleep. That is a physical path by which sound could be involved in sleep regulation.
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What was observed
Mechanism aside, the trial recorded longer total sleep, more REM sleep and earlier REM onset. Every participant rated myWaves 8 out of 10 or higher.
The breakthrough
Decades of basic research became a sleep technology
Recording human neural activity during deep sleep and turning those waves into sound. Decades of work on the rhythms characteristic of sleep, including sleep spindles, delta waves and gamma oscillations, has turned into a technology for improving sleep quality.
The research is that of Dr Alain Destexhe and his team at the CNRS, Paris-Saclay. What took years to establish is now something anyone can use.
Read the trial in full
The design, the results and the limits of the study run at Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris.