Α phase-locked auditory stimulation to treat symptoms of sleep onset insomnia | Hacker News Reader

Α phase-locked auditory stimulation to treat symptoms of sleep onset insomnia

nature.com

22 pointsPaulHoule18 comments

> During the intervention week, participants wore an electroencephalogram (EEG)-enabled headband that delivered acoustic pulses timed to arrive anti-phase with alpha for 30 min (Stimulation). During the Sham week, the headband silently recorded EEG.

Now, I might just be misreading this, but doesn't this sound like an awful way to blind the trial?

During the experimental week, participants evidently had the headband beep (okay, blast pink noise) at them for half an hour. For the sham week, it didn't. It seems like participants would be able to tell whether their headband is active or whether they're in the placebo week.

It seems to me that the better control would have been to still give participants pink noise pulses at approximately the same frequency, but without regard for the measured alpha wave cycles.

you just have a set of participents just try to sleep without it and compare. I don't think there is a standard "placebo" for a sound.

The point of the experiment isn't the sound itself, however, it's carefully timing the sounds to the allegedly correct part of the alpha brainwave cycle. That's why the participants were wearing EEG headbands for the study.

By having a sham treatment with random sound timing, you capture the baseline effect of the sound in both the experiment and control, leaving the timing as the experimental variable.

If workable, amazingly cool. I can turn overall 10:00pm and it's stacked zz until 5am. My partner can be hanging on to past midnight and it's pissing her off these last decades. Melatonin gives her horrid florid dreams and restless legs and nobody wants to get hooked to temazepam.

Melatonin usually has no side effects at the correct dosage of 1mg. Was she taking the 10mg costco tablets?

It’s a hormone. Brains are all differently equipped with those so you shouldn’t expect regularity or predictability unless you have a consistent dosage schedule

Dude there have been numerous RCTs. People reported the same side effects for 1mg melatonin and placebo

If I take Melatonin in the usual dose I get St. Elmo’s Fire, no thanks.

A literal fungal infection?

What's "the usual dose" in mg and wtf is St. Elmo’s Fire?

What you might get in a supplement, 0.3 mg to 3 mg or so.

It is like the feeling late after an LSD trip maybe 10-12 hours or more after the "usual dose" which would be 80 to 320 mcg.

Sensorium is lit up like a light psychedelic experience, might be weary but complete unable to shut down. In my image of myself in my mind's eye I am glowing with corona discharge.

Wow that's unique! I wonder if there are any other people that respond like that

Melatonin helps me sleep but it is also not restful or good sleep. She may want to try GABA supplements with it, the two together helped me to sleep and have restful sleep

I wonder if Functional Near-infrared cerebral spectroscopy[1] could be used instead of an EEG to make this work, it might be a lot easier, and cheaper... you could sew it all into a hat. Apparently the main thing you need is a Pulse Oxygen Sensor.[2]

[1] https://openfnirs.org/

[2] https://www.analog.com/en/products/max86141.html

If you want to target alpha oscillations, fNIRS is not sufficient, it measures oxygenation changes in the blood, which is a delayed metabolic response to brain activity, changing on the scale of seconds. EEG oscillations instead reflect real-time neuronal electrical activity, changing on the scale of tens of milliseconds. On the plus side, you can also sew EEG into headbands, there are a lot of wearable devices under development.

I've had periodic exploding head syndrome when I lie on my neck wrong. Random phantom noises like a single slap on the wall, gunshots, explosions, breaking noises, and crashes that aren't there but seem like they could be.

Interesting. I wanna see this tested with and without Ambien

I need one of these asap please.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com