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Wrist watch to monitor your dreams
Washington, June 09: A novel device called Watch Pat 100 can now register Rapid Eye Movement or REM, which helps detect cardiac arrests, according to the American Technion Society.
Researchers say that there is a connection between "dream sleep" REM and heart attacks, both of which occur during the early hours of the day. This FDA-approved device identifies the onset and duration of REM sleep by tracking changes in the blood flow through the finger.
Thus by identifying physiological changes unique to this stage of sleep, it is able to detect cardiac stress and other cardiac events.
The signals are stored in a removable memory card in the device, which can then be downloaded to a computer for analysis. This eliminates the need to spend an expensive night in a sleep clinic hooked to multi-lead monitoring channels that register eye movements, muscle tone and brain waves.
Two other novel features of the Watch Pat 100 are the unique multi-cell construction that prevents accummulation of venous blood in the fingertip, and advanced digital signal processing algorithms to interpret the PAT signal.
Now instead of relying on traditional methods like rapid eye movement, EEG and EMG, to detect REM sleep, this monitor can do for heart disease what the home blood pressure monitor has done for stroke prevention, says the head of the Technion Sleep Laboratory, Professor Peretz Laviehead.
He further says that information about the proportion of REM sleep and its timing during the night is also very important for the assessment of sleep quality and diagnosis of sleep disturbances.
Now by using this device, the people may be able to track their dreams and wake up at the right moment to remember them. And this can be done simply by sitting at home wearing the watch. Bureau Report