Most of us know we should probably get more sleep. Unfortunately, many of us have circumstances which make it difficult to solve that problem. Family demands and work schedules in particular can make it seem impossible to get all of the sleep we need. A lot of my research highlights how sleep deprivation creates problems at work, but that just begs the question: How can we get the sleep we need?

The best solutions are large scale, structural changes to our society and our schedules. However, we should not let a lack of progress on those solutions get in the way of trying other solutions in the meantime. The sleep literature reveals an interesting partial solution which uses wearable technology: closed loop acoustic stimulation. That’s the technical term for a specific type of headband which can enhance sleep. As I indicate below, my colleagues and I found that this technology can potentially be a way to improve sleep health even in the absence of increasing time spent sleeping.

The way this technology works is to nudge cerebral cortex activity toward deeper stages of sleep. During sleep, brain cells in the cortex move toward synchrony in their firing cycles. Some especially important recovery activities occur during deep non-REM sleep (i.e., Stage N3 sleep), with synchronized firing at about 1 cycle per second (1 Hertz). The process by which these closed loop acoustic stimulation headbands work is a little complicated, but the general idea is relatively simple. Think of multiple children on a swing set. They may be out of phase, such that one child is swinging out when the other is swinging back. But their swings can be synchronized if a parent stands behind the swings and pushes both children simultaneously.

Closed loop acoustic stimulation entails electroencephalograph (EEG) measurement of cerebral cortex electrical activity, which is fed into a processor which determines when is the right time to “nudge” these cycles. That signal is sent to headphones, which produce brief “click” noises at about 1 cycle per second. The sounds are timed to produce synchronization of activity in brain cells which align with the 1 Hertz signal seen in deep non-REM sleep. A growing literature supports the efficacy of this technology, although with diminishing effects with older age.

I investigated the effects of these headbands on not just sleep but also work outcomes with team members Cristiano Guarana (Indiana University), Jaewook Lee (Indiana University), and Ekonkar Kauer (University of Washington). We conducted a 4-week field experiment with 81 administrative employees of a university. Participants wore the headbands during sleep for the full duration of the study. For 2 week, the headbands were set to fully active mode (the treatment condition). For the other 2 weeks, everything was the same except the volume of the headphones was set to zero (the sham condition). Thus, each participant served as their own control group, with placebo effects accounted for. The order of the 2 week blocks was randomized across participants. Each day, participants completed surveys about their sleep and their behaviors at work.

We documented the results of this study in an article in the Journal of Applied Psychology. We found that having the headbands in active mode led to an increase in sleep quality of about 6%. We also found that it led to improvements in work engagement (8%), task performance (20%), and helping behavior (13%), but not negative work behavior (no significant difference). Unfortunately, just like in previous research on closed loop acoustic stimulation, we found that these effects were strongest for younger adults, with no detectable effects for participants close to 40 years old.

We do not claim that the effects of closed loop acoustic stimulation would be the same for every industry, occupation, job, or organization. However, these data do indicate that wearable technology with closed loop acoustic stimulation can improve both sleep quality and work outcomes. Moreover, as this technology advances, the effects may become more powerful. It is still the early days in this technology space, with only a few models commercially available (and the Philips DeepSleep headbands that we used in this research have been discontinued).

What I find especially compelling about this study is that the practical implications are quite clear. In many contexts, people are not able to increase the amount that they sleep. But this wearable technology can be a means to increase the quality of sleep (i.e., more deep non-REM sleep in the same amount of time spent sleeping), which has some of the same benefits as increasing sleep duration. I would not go so far as to say that increasing sleep depth is a total substitute for getting a sufficient amount of sleep. However, when time for sleep is limited, this appears to be a way to help increase the restoration which can occur.

I do think this potentially opens up a larger set of issues. Wearable technology is relatively new and rapidly advancing. Headbands with closed loop acoustic stimulation represent a benign intervention, in which barely audible clicks are the mechanism by which the technology has its effects. Such clicks are not harmful, and are not especially invasive. However, not all wearables in the future will be so benign. Many future interventions may be more invasive in what information is collected, to whom it is available, and what mechanisms are utilized to induce beneficial effects.

I suspect that as wearable technology advances, there will be important ethical debates with regards to the privacy and autonomy of employees, and the degree to which electronic interventions to alter employee physiology is acceptable to all parties involved. The role of employers and employees will be negotiated in ways that would not have been anticipated even just a few years ago, and I am not sure we as a society have fully thought this through. I do hope that as these issues become salient, we listen to all stakeholders, especially those whose bodies are the targets of physiologically-based interventions.