Awards & Nominations
Gen Zzz has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Sleep Shift Scheduling Tool
Wakeshift: A smart sleep mask for shifting wakefulness through light and brain wave manipulation
Summary
The Wakeshift Mask and Wakeshift App work conjunctively in order to reduce jet lag-related fatigue for space and Earth travelers alike, while also empowering users to maintain a balance of nutrition, fitness, and sleep. The eye mask contains an electroencephalogram (EEG) and reflective pulse oximetry sensors in the forehead area, as well as electrooculography (EOG) sensors in the eye area. Together, the EEG and EOG detect the stage of sleep the user resides in and determines when and which binaural beats to play. The app consolidates nutrition, exercise, and sleep information to improve restfulness for sleep-deprived individuals.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The disruption of Circadian rhythms that astronauts experience when living aboard the ISS is a problem that extends to anyone on Earth traveling between time zones. Astronauts, airplane pilots, and international travelers alike experience jet lag, as wella s disruptions to their diet and exercise routines, when they travel long distances or for long periods of time. Through this project, we hope to mitigate the fatigue of long-distance and long-term travel.
EEGs read brainwaves, while EOGs track eye movement. Both of these are fundamental to the development of our project. As one falls asleep, their brainwaves shift from higher-frequency alpha and beta waves to lower-frequency theta and delta waves. When it is time for a traveler to sleep, they will put the mask on along with a pair of earbuds, and the mask will read their brain frequencies. The EOG in the forehead will track the frequencies, and the app will then play binaural beats according to the sleep stage of the traveler.
Binaural beats occur when one frequency is played into one ear, while a different frequency is played into the other ear. The brain perceives the difference between the two frequencies. As someone first lies down to fall asleep, they will press “start” on the app. Their earbuds will then begin playing theta wave frequencies (3.5-7 Hz) to help the user fall into stage N1 of sleep (light sleep) for about 10 minutes. Once 50% of the brain’s wakeful alpha waves are replaced with theta waves, the app will move on to playing delta waves (0.5-3 Hz) for roughly 20 minutes. This will help the user transition through stage N2 (light sleep) and into stage N3 (deep, non-REM sleep). At the end of stage N2, the EEG will detect k-complexes, which are standalone delta waves, and sleep spindles, which are rapid oscillations of brain activity. This is a sign that the user is moving into NREM deep sleep. Once almost all brain waves are delta waves, the app will cease to play binaural beats. When the user enters REM sleep after 20-40 minutes in stage N3, their brain will emit beta waves, which resemble brainwaves of a person who is awake and alert. The device will not resume playing binaural beats unless the user begins emitting alpha waves, which are indicative of an awake, sedentary person. This cycle will repeat with each REM cycle -- about 4 to 5 per night.
When the user wakes up, they will be able to review their sleep from the previous night, including how long they spent in deep sleep, how long they spent in REM sleep, and how many REM cycles they went through.
Researched effects of using binaural beats to fall asleep include a rise in melatonin production around a user’s bedtime, an increase in DHEA, a master hormone critical to immune function, and a decrease in cortisol, a hormone colloquially known as the “stress hormone” that prevents restfulness.
The Wakeshift App will also track users’ food consumption, hydration, and exercise throughout the day because the calories a user consumes or burns, along with their general fitness, affect their ability to achieve uninterrupted sleep. For example, effective exercise can lower cortisol levels and release endorphins, which make it more likely that a user will sleep well at night. The exercise category includes heart rate and SpO2 (blood oxygen), which can be measured at any time by placing the forehead band on the user’s forehead. The food tracker incorporates data from NASA’s ISS FIT, which we will discuss later on.
By consolidating the user’s sleep, nutrition, and fitness data into one mobile smartphone app, Wakeshift democratizes the ability to healthfully shift sleep and wake schedules for the general population, not just astronauts.
How We Developed This Project
The way NASA astronauts currently handle disrupted sleep schedules in the extreme environment of space were treated as best practices for doing the same on Earth. We drew inspiration for our mask from the Muse headband, one of the most popular brain computer interfaces which reads brain waves for meditation and health, and wanted to similarly leverage the technology to improve quality and length of sleep for jet-lagged travelers in the scope of this challenge. We were also interested in the current uses of binaural beats, which use low-frequency alpha waves to relax and calm the brain for studying and meditation. We believed these instances of brain computer interfaces, proving highly effective in fostering cognitive clarity for specific tasks or for general sleep, could be finetuned specifically for shifting wakefulness instead of merely optimizing it.
Apart from purely cognitive and auditory processes, we found that sleep was also highly dependent on light color and intensity stimulating the eyes, which led us to research into smart sleep masks. In creating the Wakeshift eye mask and ancillary mobile app, we sought to combine cognitive, auditory, and visual stimulation to enhance sleep and wakefulness through EEGs, binaural beats, and EOGs, respectively. We recognized an opportunity to create a holistic product for sleep. Our motivation for creating the accompanying Wakeshift app was to match sleep enhancement with wakefulness enhancement by also focusing on nutrition and fitness, as both contribute to sleep quality as well. Through our app we could create an interface for users to easily monitor their sleep data, while also providing as input health data while they are awake to facilitate a highly personalized sleep scheduling tool.
Our team learned Swift over the duration of the hackathon in order to develop the Wakeshift app using Xcode as our IDE. Many of our graphics for product ideation were generated with Google Drawings and Figma. As high school juniors and seniors, we had to balance academic obligations over the weekend with competing in the hackathon while doing extra research to compensate for our novice developer skills.
Our team initially had difficulties with running Xcode and importing graphics. Since Xcode stores files locally and won’t allow live collaboration, all of the code had to be written on a single device. This made collaborating on the physical app design much more tedious than we had anticipated. However, we were able to complete a basic draft of our app interface. We acknowledge that a lot of Xcode is still very new to developers and on top of that it is not as popular as other programming languages are; because of this, finding documentation for a lot of code was extremely difficult.
On the conceptual side, we were able to organize the different categories of brain frequencies and how they pertain to the various stages of sleep. We also managed to get an idea of the components that would reside in the fabric of the Wakeshift mask. Initially, we were uncertain if we wanted to include NASA’s previous research on lighting control for circadian rhythms. In the end, however, we concluded that light control is not necessary in this stage of development because the eye mask should effectively block out external light.
Apart from digital design, we were unable to fully conceptualize, build, or test the Wakeshift Mask due to the complexity of the EEGs, EOGs, and reflective pulse oximeters we included as components of the mask. In the future, we plan to continue the Wakeshift project beyond the NASA Space Apps hackathon in order to fully round out our research. One of the first steps we anticipate taking is experimenting with existing brain computer interfaces like the Muse headband in order to explore how we would incorporate EEGs into our sleep mask.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Sleep: Data from existing systems and processes used by NASA and other astronauts to control their Circadian rhythms and sleep cycles informed our decisions on how to optimize sleep through one single mask. Specifically, the Light System to Improve Circadian Rhythm Control, Paired Sleep Light Tracker, and other light therapy tools helped us to conclude a physical covering in the form of the mask would be the best to block out light during sleep, as well as validate our decision to use an EOG to further regulate electrical activity of the eyes during REM cycles. Furthermore, a literature of pharmacological ways to deal with disrupted sleep schedules revealed how useful and safe a device like the Wakeshift Mask could be.
Nutrition and Fitness: The Wakeshift app directly integrates data from NASA’s ISS FIT app, which was originally used to track space crews’ food and drink consumption when they were on long missions. The app provides a database of foods and their nutritional values, as well as what food is available on the journey. This app could be repurposed for pilots and long-distance travelers, since it becomes difficult to accurately judge when one should eat and how many calories one has consumed when traveling across time zones for extended periods. The ISS FIT app differs from other nutrient trackers as it is specifically designed to track hydration along with nutrition in the absence of access to fresh food.
Project Demo
An overview of the Wakeshift Mask and App can be found here.
Project Code
Data & Resources
https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/KSC-TOPS-52
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2018/cg_8.html
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/astronauts_improve_sleep
https://lish.harvard.edu/iss-fit-app
https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Gaps/gap.aspx?i=737
https://www.nasa.gov/content/study-compiles-data-on-problem-of-sleep-deprivation-in-astronauts
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00425/full
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sleep-newzzz/201810/how-can-binaural-beats-help-you-sleep-better
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270580/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557469/
https://24x7mag.com/medical-equipment/testing-calibration/general-testing-equipment/understanding-spo2-sensor-testing/
https://journals.lww.com/anesthesia-analgesia/fulltext/2009/12000/A_Comparison_of_Transmittance_and_Reflectance.21.aspx
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81961664.pdf
https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Gaps/gap.aspx?i=737
https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Experiment/exper/27061
https://global.jaxa.jp/article/special/expedition/wakata01_e.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH2hL5Ua_m8
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/nasa-research-reveals-biological-clock-misalignment-effects-on-sleep-for-astronauts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulp1Kimblg0