Zeo Personal Sleep Coach?

[quote="ProfessorEd"]It is a .dat file and my computer warns to be cautious in opening it. I did not risk it, but have a sneaking suspicion it would be easy to decode it and transfer to a spread sheet.[quote]

Please open the file in Notepad and take a look at ti. There is no risk to your computer. If you want you can email to me and I will have a look at it.

jskinner wrote:

jnk wrote:Although the machine might be able to recognize delta sleep with some consistency, I would think that it would take some seriously good sensors and some major-league powerful machine logic to recognize consistently the differences between a person's waves when awake, when in stage 1, and when in REM.

I'm not sure I agree. Once we understand more about what sleep stages are it might be easier to monitor them. I recommend watching this video on a technology for a single electrode sleep stage detector.

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/w ... philip-low

My comments were in relation to present technology and understanding as implemented in this particular product.

jskinner wrote:

Derek@Zeo wrote:Our research (some of which has been conducted by third parties and showcased at professional sleep conferences around the world) has shown that Zeo is accurate at phasing sleep over the course of the night. As you mentioned, at occasional points in time, Zeo can have some difficulty in determining if you are in Wake, Light sleep or REM sleep – but the aggregate data (your total Z, time in REM, time in Deep over the course of the entire night) compares very well with the results of a PSG (the gold standard for assessing sleep).,

Are you able to tell us a little more how exactly the Zeo works? Is this based at all upon Philip Low's single electrode sleep stage rescearch?

The best description can be found in a video titled "The Science of Zeo Summary" that is on YouTube, which gives a brief company history then dives into how the technology was developed.

Derek@Zeo wrote: The best description can be found in a video titled "The Science of Zeo Summary" that is on YouTube, which gives a brief company history then dives into how the technology was developed.

Thanks Derek, That was interesting. I was hoping to get a more detailed understanding of the technology. Here are a few questions:

1) I see that the head band has three electrode points. Is the Zeo essencially a three channel PSG with automated scoring?

2) Is the Zeo software upgradeable so that the sleep staging algorithum can be upgraded over time with improvements?

3) How many nights can the Zeo store on an SD card? What size of SD card does the Zeo come with?

4) Is the data on the SD card just the 3 channel data from the electrodes or is the the post scored data?

Thanks, James

JSkinner, thanks for asking these questions. I, too, would like to know much more about how Zeo works.

Derek@Zeo: Thanks for your replies. I just watched the YouTube video but it did not teach me anything I didn't already know, because I'd already read the literature that comes with the Zeo. I'd like to know more about how Zeo works. The literature claims it measures your brainwaves. Does it really do that (and for all phases of sleep) or is that just a figure of speech? Is it instead that it detects from slight movements of the skin on your forehead when you eyes are moving (and calls it REM), and perhaps it also has a traditional motion detector that tells it when you're walking around or tossing around (and calls it Wake). What I'd like to know is how it differentiates between light sleep and deep sleep (I mentioned earlier that for both me and my husband, my Zeo has made mistakes between all 4 stages of sleep including telling us we're in deep sleep when we're actually fully awake, staring at its screen). Does the Zeo make the differentiation between light sleep and deep sleep simply based on time, meaning, perhaps it will never claim you've been in deep sleep until it's claimed you've been in light sleep for a while (I noticed that's the case)? Maybe it also measures heart rate and concludes that when your heart is at its slowest, you're in deep sleep? I'm just skeptical about it measuring your actual brain waves. And if it does do that, does it have the same possible cancer risks as cell phone use, especially since people are supposed to use the Zeo for 8 hours every night?

Thanks in advance for any details you can give us!

Hi James & Yellow,

Great questions! So good, in fact, that we’re beginning to approach a proprietary level of information - I’ve done my best to clarify how Zeo works up to that point... But prepare yourselves for another long-winded response from yours truly.

First, the questions from James:
1. Zeo is not equivalent to a PSG, which is a tool used in sleep labs that senses a wide range of physiologic signals. Zeo is made for people to use in their home to gain insight and direction on their sleep fitness - just like a bathroom scale is used for physical fitness.
2. Yes, the software is upgradeable and can be enhanced from time to time.
3. The SD card that comes with Zeo is 256 MB, and each night is very small (typically under 10k). We recommend that you erase your SD card every three months to keep upload times down.
4. The SD card stores all of the information that you can see on the bedside display, not the raw data wirelessly transmitted by the headband.

And now those from Yellow:
It’s not just a figure of speech - Zeo does indeed track your brainwaves in order to determine sleep phases. Your questions are getting at another component that we don’t mention in the literature though - other factors that create electrical signals, like body and eye movement, are also taken into consideration. After all of these inputs, the rules that help Zeo decide which phase of sleep you are in are quite complex.

But, as I mentioned before, there can be many similarities between signals while awake and asleep depending on the level of activity. Sometimes, moments of quiet wakefulness have elements that resemble certain aspects of sleep (Stiller & Postolache, Clin Sports Med, 2005). Furthermore, scientists agree that the fine line between sleep and awake can be ambiguous (Merica & Fortune, Sleep Med Rev, 2004). As a result, it is rare but possible for Zeo to indicate that a person is asleep when they are semi-alert and relaxed, that a person is awake when they are lightly sleeping. With all that said, Zeo has been scientifically validated for accuracy (Wright K, Johnstone J, Fabregas SE, Shambroom JR. Evaluation of a portable dry sensor-based automatic sleep monitoring system. Sleep. 2008;31 (Suppl.):A337, Shambroom JR, Johnstone J, Fabregas SE. Evaluation of a portable monitor for staging sleep. Sleep. 2009;32 (Suppl.):A386) comparing very well with the results of a PSG, and the output should be used directionally (not on a minute-by-minute basis) to help you with your sleep fitness.

With this depth of discussion, it is important for me to clarify that Zeo is neither a medical device nor a medical program and is not intended for the diagnosis or treatment of sleep disorders. Anyone that suspects they have a sleep disorder should consult their physician.

You also asked about the safety of the headband transmission. Zeo has been laboratory tested and complies with all standards for digital and wireless devices. To ensure its safety, the wireless transmitter in the Zeo headband has been designed and tested to meet US and international standards for safety. Zeo’s transmitter meets or exceeds the standards set by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the European Commission (which oversees the “CE” mark). Importantly, and in addition, Zeo also has a mark of safety from the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). CSA marks mean a product has been tested and meets applicable standards for safety and/or performance, including the applicable standards written or administered by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Underwriters Laboratories (UL), Canadian Standards Association (CSA), National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), and others. Among those standards used within this kind of product testing is a test for the human body’s absorption of radio waves emitted by the headband. Zeo’s emission level is so low that the test cannot even be applied (in fact it is twenty-five times lower than the minimum applicable level). To put it another way, the Zeo Headband emits one one-thousandth the radio wave energy of a common cell phone.

Look forward to hearing what you think.

Regards,
Derek

There's a reference on their own website to the trials they did to confirm the accuracy of its "staging." I just skimmed the abstract of one of the papers they show:
http://www.myzeo.com/download/21_esrs_poster_06_09.pdf
and it seems to be a electrical sensor, i.e., not a motion sensor. THey refer to it as a "dry sensor."
It uses a neural network to make some sense out of the signal it's getting.
Neural networks are good at learning, so maybe after a few nights it gets better.
However, trying to fool it, as in staying awake and staring at it, could produce bad results and maybe even pollute the data for a little while.

I sure do want at least the ability to put the card's data into a local Excel spreadsheet. I can understand their need to make money with the subscriptions, but for $400 we deserve at least that.

I had a breif email with Zeo Customer Support as I am thinking of buying one of these devices. One interesting thing I learned is that 'Zeo tracks awakenings that are two minutes or longer' Therefore for us sleep apnea crowd it might not be that good since I would guess many of our awakenings are less than 2 minutes in lenght?

What I really want is a full sleep staging medical device. The work that Philip Low at NeuroVigil looks really promising in this respect. However in the mean time the Zeo should give us more than we can currently get.

One draw back that i see is that you can't create multiple patient profiles per Zeo. This means that you can't share a Zeo between multiple people easily. The best that you can do that is to reset the online account between persona usages and loose your data.

jskinner wrote:One draw back that i see is that you can't create multiple patient profiles per Zeo.

I think it would be helpful if we started using language like "sleeper profile" instead of "patient profile". Right now, it seems that the manufacturers think of their gaol as helping people who deal with patients (e.g., respiratory therapists) rather than the people who actually need the help (i.e., those who have sleep disordered breathing). Changing the language may help refocus the goals. And, thanks for all your work on data analysis.

New prices have been announced for the Zeo today:

'Zeo Personal Sleep Coach - $249
Zeo Personal Sleep Coach with Guided Coaching Package - $349

Oddly, even though I don't trust the machine I have kept using it and accumulating data.

It is a shame the law makes it hard to discuss it as a medical device, or a supplement. I have a strong suspicion that such a machine could be calibrated during a sleep study so that it would be much more accurate. However, this would make it a medical device and very expensive to get FDA approval to sell it.

The most obvious improvement is one their web to permit customized record of what you think is affecting your sleep, such as when you took Provigil, Trytophan, argued with your wife, hear your neighbor beating his wife, etc. Delivering a simple program on disk to record the data and anything else you wanted would be a value enhancing feature.

.

Hi All

I did a Google, and right at the front was this -

http://rdn-consulting.com/blog/2009/06/ ... ch-a-scam/

Mars

secret agent girl wrote:I'd be interested in hearing any updates... So far, I'm leaning towards "toy", though I'm open to learning more from user's reports.

What do you mean by 'toy?' You don't believe that it accurately determines sleep stages?

I am beginning to believe that Zeo may worth trying on the 30-day trial. The technology appears to work as advertised. In researching I came across Cleveland Med sleep devices here http://www.clevemed.com/products_sleep_ ... ucts.shtml They have at least one home device that looks very powerful but I don't know the price.

There is certainly a movement to develop exotic personal monitoring devices.

John