Effects of Vestibular Stimuli on Sleep
With this project we aim to gain a deeper scientific knowledge about the impact of vestibular stimuli on onset of sleep and sleep quality. Our findings may build the base for developing new treatment methods to improve sleep quality and may offer new non-pharmacological therapeutic approaches to improve sleep disturbances in the elderly population.
Involved People
Oriella Gnarra
Restorative sleep is crucial for day-time functioning and well-being. Rocking movements appear to have remarkable effects on sleep and examples can be found in everyday life. Recent research suggested a facilitated transition from wake to sleep due to lateral rocking movements. Although vestibular stimulation seems to have the potential to influence and improve sleep quality, the relationship between rocking movements and sleep is poorly understood to date. Besides the fact that only few studies addressed this topic, the effect of movements on sleep has not been investigated in a systematic and quantifiable manner. Furthermore, the existing studies focused mainly on healthy young subjects. However, a potentially large target population, which could benefit from vestibular stimulation, are the elderly. Sleep organization undergoes profound changes throughout the normal aging process which results in decreased sleep efficiency and sleep quality in 30-70% of the elderly population.
Within this project, the effect of vestibular stimulation on sleep will be investigated in an elderly population. The project focuses on the question whether rocking movements positively influence sleep and improve sleep quality in healthy elderly subjects. Vestibular stimulation will be applied by robotic platforms developed in our lab. In a first step, the existing robotic platforms will be further refined and adapted to reduce their complexity. Furthermore, it is of interest to reduce the amount of sensors needed to record sleep to influence sleep quality as little as possible by the measurement setup. The adapted robotic platforms will then be applied, in a second step, to investigate the effect of vestibular stimulation on the onset and process of sleep and on sleep quality in healthy elderly participants. The third aim represents the transfer of the gained knowledge and the commercialization of develop technology as part of a technology transfer to the industry and/ or a medical and clinical environment.
Media Links
external page 3sat - NANO
Broadcasted on 27.08.2014
external page SRF - Einstein
Broadcasted on 04.09.2014
external page BBC – WORLD NEWS/Click
Broadcasted on 08.08.2016
Publications
R. van Sluijs et al. “Gentle Rocking Movements during Sleep in the Elderly”, Journal of Sleep Research, (2020)
R. van Sluijs et al. “Effect of Rocking Movements on Afternoon Sleep”, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 13, P. 1446 (2020)
external page X. Omlin et al. “The Effect of a Slowly Rocking Bed on Sleep”, Scientific Reports, 8 (1), P. 2156 (2018)
external page X. Omlin et al. “Effect of Rocking Movements on Respiration”, PloS one, 11 (3), (2016)
external page F. Crivelli et al. “Somnomat: A Novel Actuated Bed to Investigate the Effect of Vestivular Stimulation”, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computation, 54(6), P. 877 – 9889 (2016).