If you think you have trouble sleeping in your own bed, consider the effects of not sleeping in a microgravity environment attached to a sleeping bag while orbiting the Earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour. Astronauts have trouble maintaining a normal sleep pattern under an artificial day and night cycle and often develop poor sleep habits.
A group of scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark have designed a small device to monitor astronauts’ sleep patterns and to measure how they sleep in space. The device is called ear-EEG (ear-ElectroEncephaloGraphy) and can be worn in the ear like a headset. The ear-EEG monitors the electrical activity of the astronauts’ brains while they sleep, after it is fitted. It works by detecting extremely small voltage changes on the surface of the skin inside the ear caused by electrical activity from neurons in the brain, Aarhus University explains.
Eskild Holm Nielsen, dean of the Faculty of Technical Sciences at Aarhus University, said: “In the future, we will probably be in space much more often and we will need to stay there longer, and it is important to understand how this affects our sleep. Being able to have a precise physiological characterization of sleep will help astronauts get a better night’s sleep in space. “It will also help us find out how we can help.”
Astronauts sleep in a sleeping bag attached to the wall, usually in small cell-box-sized compartments. They also live under a fake day and night cycle, which is implemented by changing the light settings on the space station from light to dark to allow them to sleep for about 6-8 hours each day. But apart from this false cycle, they lack the feeling of putting their head on the pillow and covering themselves with a blanket because there is no gravity.
Ear-EEG will be used by astronauts on the International Space Station and on Earth to measure the difference in sleep patterns between Earth and space. The data will help scientists observe how much sleeping in space affects astronauts’ cognitive functions at a physiological level, which can affect their decision-making skills, memory, reasoning and attention span.
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