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What if you could make
your sleep more efficient?
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As a sleep scientist,
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this is the question
that has captivated me
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for the past 10 years.
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Because while the lightbulb
and technology have brought about a world
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of 24-hour work and productivity,
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it has come at the cost
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of our naturally occurring
circadian rhythm
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and our body's need for sleep.
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The circadian rhythm dictates
our energy level throughout the day,
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and only recently we've been conducting
a global experiment on this rhythm,
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which is putting our sleep health
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and ultimately
our life quality in jeopardy.
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Because of this,
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we aren't getting the sleep we need,
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with the average American
sleeping a whole hour less
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than they did in the 1940s.
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For some reason,
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we decided to wear it as a badge of honor
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that we can get by on not enough sleep.
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This all adds up to a real health crisis.
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Most of us know that poor sleep
is linked to diseases
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like Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease,
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stroke and diabetes.
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And if you go untreated
with a sleep disorder like sleep apnea,
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you're more likely
to get many of these illnesses.
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But did you know about sleep's impact
on your mental states?
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Poor sleep makes us
make risky, rash decisions
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and is a drain
on our capacity for empathy.
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When sleep deprivation literally makes us
more sensitive to our own pain,
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it's not so surprising that we have
a hard time relating to others
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and just generally
being a good and healthy person
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when we're sleep-deprived.
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Scientists are now starting to understand
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how not only the quantity
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but also the quality of sleep
impacts our health and well-being.
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My research focuses
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on what many scientists believe
is the most regenerative stage of sleep:
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deep sleep.
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We now know that generally speaking,
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there are three stages of sleep:
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light sleep,
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rapid eye movement or REM
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and deep sleep.
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We measure these stages by connecting
electrodes to the scalp, chin and chest.
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In light sleep and REM,
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our brain waves are very similar
to our brain waves in waking life.
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But our brain waves in deep sleep
have these long-burst brain waves
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that are very different
from our waking life brain waves.
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These long-burst brain waves
are called delta waves.
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When we don't get the deep sleep we need,
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it inhibits our ability to learn
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and for our cells and bodies to recover.
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Deep sleep is how we convert
all those interactions
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that we make during the day
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into our long-term memory
and personalities.
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As we get older,
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we're more likely to lose
these regenerative delta waves.
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So in way, deep sleep and delta waves
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are actually a marker
for biological youth.
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So naturally, I wanted to get
more deep sleep for myself
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and I literally tried almost every gadget,
gizmo, device and hack out there --
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consumer-grade, clinical-grade,
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what have you.
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I learned a lot, and I found
I really do need, like most people,
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eight hours of sleep.
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I even shifted my circadian component
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by changing my meals,
exercise and light exposure,
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but I still couldn't find a way
to get a deeper night of sleep ...
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that is until I met
Dr. Dmitry Gerashchenko
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from Harvard Medical School.
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Dmitry told me about
a new finding in the literature,
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where a lab out of Germany showed
that if you could play certain sounds
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at the right time in people's sleep,
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you could actually make sleep
deeper and more efficient.
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And what's more, is that this lab showed
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that you actually could improve
next-day memory performance
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with this sound.
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Dmitry and I teamed up,
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and we began working on a way
to build this technology.
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With our research lab
collaborators at Penn State,
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we designed experiments
in order to validate our system.
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And we've since received grant funding
from the National Science Foundation
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and the National Institute of Health
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to develop this deep-sleep
stimulating technology.
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Here's how it works.
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People came into the lab
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and we hooked them up
to a number of devices,
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two of which I have on right here --
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not a fashion statement.
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(Laughter)
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When we detected
that people were in deep sleep,
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we played the deep-sleep
stimulating sounds
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that were shown
to make them have deeper sleep.
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I'm going to demo this sound
for you right now.
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(Repeating sound waves)
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Pretty weird, right?
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(Laughter)
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So that sound is actually at the same
burst frequency as your brain waves
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when your brain is in deep sleep.
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That sound pattern
actually primes your mind
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to have more of these
regenerative delta waves.
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When we asked participants
the next day about the sounds,
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they were completely unaware
that we played the sounds,
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yet their brains responded
with more of these delta waves.
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Here's an image of someone's brain waves
from the study that we conducted.
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See the bottom panel?
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This shows the sound being played
at that burst frequency.
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Now look at the brain waves
in the upper part of the graph.
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You can see from the graph
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that the sound is actually producing
more of these regenerative delta waves.
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We learned that we could
accurately track sleep
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without hooking people up to electrodes
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and make people sleep deeper.
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We're continuing to develop
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the right sound environment
and sleep habitat
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to improve people's sleep health.
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Our sleep isn't
as regenerative as it could be,
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but maybe one day soon,
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we could wear a small device
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and get more out of our sleep.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)