Recently over at the Mac Power Users, someone asked whether it was worth trying to track sleep with Apple Watch apps. Another poster (“Rob”) asked whether consumer EEG devices (like Dreem) are any better. I provide some opinions (but no advice).
The poster and abstract for our first contribution to the 2019 World Sleep Congress, Towards an integrative design-oriented theory of sleep-onset and insomnolence from which a new cognitive treatment for insomnolence (serial diverse kinesthetic imagining, a form of cognitive shuffling) is proposed… , are now available from SFU Summit: Item 18922. This is the first of
I was interviewed about sleep by Ryan Takagi, Simon Fraser University Rowing Coach, who specializes in athletic wellness & performance. Here’s the podcast episode link: My conversation with Professor Luc Beaudoin on sleep
On the CogSci Apps blog, I announced the new CogSci Apps logo)! Check it out. It’s a good example of social cognitive productivity: doing knowledge work with a great graphic designer, to create a concrete logo that meets multiple very abstract requirements.
A claim my co-authors and I make in an upcoming paper on sleep onset and insomnia is that perturbant emotion causes insomnolence. This is not to say that perturbance is the sole cause of insomnolence. In fact, our theory proposes five postulates about the evolutionary design of the human sleep onset control system. One of
Over the last several months, I’ve been too busy doing research and development —including on sleep onset and insomnia —, writing papers, and managing a new product launch, to contribute much to this blog. But the work we are doing will have major benefits for mySleepButton. I wish I could spill the beans, but first
As promised, mySleepButton version 1.4.12 for iOS has been released with support for Siri Shortcuts. You can now define shortcuts to tell Siri to “put me to sleep”, and it will start playing mySleepButton. This is handy if you’re sleeping alone and want to control mySleepButton without even looking at your iPhone or iPad.
The next release of mySleepButton for iOS, version 1.4.12, will contain support for Siri Shortcuts. You will be able to tell your iPhone or iPad “put me to sleep” and it will launch or resume mySleepButton’s play. You will also be able to pause or stop mySleepButton. Siri Shortcuts are of course configurable If you’d
Media and researchers alike often focus on the dark side of sleep: that (and why) we don’t get enough sleep, and that sleep deprivation has significant adverse impacts on biological and mental health, well-being, productivity and error rates. Amongst the many other things sleep researchers study, they also study behaviors and interventions that promote sleep.
There are several big ideas behind mySleepButton’s current and upcoming cognitive shuffle packs (as well as DIY versions). I’ve written some papers about these ideas before, and am currently co-authoring a new paper with Célyne H. Bastien on the subject. The theory we are developing is called the “somnolent information-processing theory“.
