How Affectable Sleep (formerly SoundMind) Increases the Efficiency of Deep Sleep

At Affectable Sleep we aim to be as open as possible about our capabilities and how we plan to improve the lives of millions through improving the neurological function of the brain during sleep. Improved sleep can mean so many things to different people, but in our initial work, we’re focusing on improving the efficiency of deep sleep.

Peer reviewed published research into the stimulation we work with to improve sleep is linked on our website. However, even some of our team find the research to be quite a dense read. We often talk about the health benefits and results of sound stimulation for improving sleep, but I wanted to take time to explain WHY it works. What is happening inside your brain and how do we measure the stimulation and the results.

The brain is made of billions of neurons, which you can think of like traffic lights at an intersection. These neurons use electrical (and chemical) signaling to communicate between each other, which results in changes in activity throughout the network of neurons in the brain.

When you’re awake, and as you read this blog post, different areas of your brain are more active than others, some of these neurons are signaling quickly, while others more slowly. For example, the visual areas of your brain are active reading these words, while the language and memory centers will be relaying signals to create meaning and understanding. Beyond your conscious processes, this neuronal activity is also conducting the unconscious systems you don’t actively control, such as your heart and breath rates, immune system, and more.

When you go to sleep, the neurons in your brain continue to be active. In REM sleep, when you are dreaming, the visual areas of your brain are highly active communicating what you see in your dreams.

Deep sleep is the most restorative part of sleep, and it is here where the activity of the brain changes considerably. During deep sleep neurons synchronize their activity. Compared to other times when some areas are more active than others, during deep sleep there is synchronized pulsing of neurons firing . This coordinated activity of the neurons in the brain is what makes deep “slow-wave” sleep so powerful and important.

At Affectable Sleep, we use sound, aka auditory stimulation, to increase the synchronous firing of neurons. Throughout the night we monitor brain activity, and when we detect the synchronized firing of neurons, we interrupt this pattern with a brief 50ms (less than 1/10th of 1 second) blip of sound. This brief interruption excites the neurons and in response, the brain increases its synchronized activity.

It is this increase in synchronous activity which has been measured to have significant impacts on the effectiveness of deep sleep. These improvements are measured directly in the activity of the brain, not in “how many minutes” you spent in this stage of sleep, but rather how impactful was the time you spent in deep sleep.

Research shows this increased synchronous activity leads to improved memory, and executive function, increased immune function, and lower cortisol levels during sleep, increased heart-rate variability and downregulation of nervous system response, and more.

The next phase of research is measuring the effect of stimulation on removal of beta-amyloids, related to Alzheimer’s prevention, concussion & TBI, and more. We’re actively speaking to researchers interested in examining the impact on insulin response for improved outcomes in people with type 2 diabetes, as well as athletic recovery and this is just the beginning.

If you have any question, please reach out, and we’ll be revealing more about our upcoming product and results from early test users in the coming months.

If you’re going to be in Sydney, Australia for SXSW in October and would like to get an early look at our product, we’ll be setting some time aside to show off our early product, so please reach out.