Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 28, 2026
Multi-Modal Home Sleep Monitoring in Older Adults
Published on: January 26, 2019
Performance of an electroencephalography-measuring headband or actigraphy compared with polysomnography in older
Brienne Miner1, Anne Chen1, Yulu Pan1
1Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States.
Study Objectives:
We assessed the performance of an electroencephalography-measuring headband (HB) or actigraphy (ACT) compared with polysomnography (PSG) in older adults with sleep disturbances.
Methods:
Sixty-one older adults reporting insomnia and/or daytime sleepiness wore the HB for up to 7 nights, ACT for 7 days and nights, and completed an in-home PSG. We compared total sleep time (TST), wake after sleep onset (WASO), sleep onset latency (SOL), and sleep efficiency (SE) from all devices on the PSG night. For HB-PSG, we compared time in light, deep, and rapid eye movement sleep. For all comparisons, we calculated absolute differences and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). We also evaluated the performance of the HB among the poorest sleepers (e.g. severe sleep apnea or insomnia).
Results:
Average age was 72.6 [SD = 6.5] years, 62.3 per cent were female, and 77.1 per cent were non-Hispanic white. For HB-PSG, we found good agreement for TST, WASO, and SE (ICCs ranging 0.82-0.91), while SOL and sleep stages were lower (ICCs 0.44-0.66). For ACT-PSG, we found moderate agreement for TST (ICC 0.73) and poor agreement for WASO, SOL, and SE (ICCs < 0.50). For the poorest sleepers, HB-PSG showed good to excellent agreement for TST and WASO (ICCs 0.56-0.91), while ACT-PSG showed lower levels of agreement (ICCs 0.55-0.80 for TST and <0.59 for WASO). On average, participants wore the HB for 6.5 [0.8] nights and usability was rated highly.
Conclusions:
The HB outperformed ACT, including among the poorest sleepers. Devices like the HB are accurate, feasible, and could advance sleep health in older adults.
