The Science behind Bía Sleep
Bía uses cutting-edge sensor technology, proprietary algorithms, and novel stimulation techniques to help you achieve great sleep, every night.
Neurofeedback is a way to train your brain to achieve a desired brain state, such as sleep. It works by leaning on the incredible ability of your brain to learn and adapt to new things, often called neuroplasticity.
Think of Neurofeedback as a coach for your brain. It rewards good behaviour, in real-time, allowing your brain to learn much faster than it would without feedback.
Bía uses Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to accurately track your sleep stages. It works by using specialized light that passes through your skin and reflects off of blood cells in active areas of your brain. More reflection, means more oxygen in your blood, means more activity in your brain.
With the high-fidelity fNIRS signals and proprietary algorithms in the Bía Smart Sleep Mask it's able to accurately track your brain state, create Neural Music, and train your brain to sleep better.
Our brains operate by sending messages between specialized cells called "neurons". Throughout the day, the neurons in our brains send billions of messages to one another. These messages make up our thoughts, behaviors and emotions.
Bía Sleep's Neural Music is precisely tuned to mimic brain activity. Just by hearing the Neural Music, the neurons in your own brain will be encouraged to sync up and fire together like instruments at a symphony instead of a busy new york street.
Traditionally, speakers create waves in the air that our ears pick up as sound. With Bía, we create tiny vibrations in the foam of mask that your brain picks up as sound.
We find this technique fascinating as it has a calming effect on your vagus nerve - impacting digestion, heart rate, respiratory rate, and more.
Vibrating the foam means that we can move the speakers to the front of the Bia Smart Sleep Mask instead of placing them over the ears.
This makes it extra comfortable for side sleepers and gives others the option of wearing earplugs to block out the outside noise while letting the soothing sounds of Neural Music pass through.
Your body has a natural 24 hour cycle that controls the release of sleep hormones at night, melatonin, and wake hormones in the morning, cortisol. This cycle is called your "Circadian Rhythm" and it's influenced naturally by the rise and fall of the sun.
Today's modern society with screens at work, from our phones, and from our watches can sabotage our circadian rhythm by tricking it to stay active late into the evening, and our dark rooms prevent you from fully waking up in the morning. This impacts the time to fall asleep and how well-rested you feel when you wake up.
With Bía Sleep, you can shift your circadian rhythm directly, on your own terms. At night, the 100% blackout helps melatonin release faster, and in the morning the slow illumination of the lights in the mask helps wake you up feeling great.
Meet Our In-House Scientists & Expert Council
Dr. Shaun Fickling is a respected scientist known nationally for his expertise in signal processing, AI, data analysis, and neuroscience research. With a background in physiology and neuroscience, Dr. Shaun Fickling has dedicated his career to understanding the complexities of the brain and developing innovative approaches to optimizing the brain for improved health and well-being.
Dr. Joshua Roland is a board-certified sleep medicine physician who is passionate about translating clinical sleep medicine into the tech and start-up space to create revolutionary models of care and therapeutic approaches to treating sleep conditions. He has several publications in peer-reviewed literature, has contributed to sleep medicine textbooks, and has been cited by multiple sleep-related articles and media outlets.
Pat Byrne pioneered sleep and fatigue programs for professional athletes and sports teams in 2008. His science-based approach and practical solutions have proven to increase performance for athletes, teams and workers, globally. His successful track record includes many championship teams across North America and Australia. With over 30 years of experience in health, safety and performance optimization Pat brings a unique and effective approach to fatigue management.
Pat was also the founder of Fatigue Science combining new sleep actigraphy technology with a US military biomathematical model to predict real time individual effectiveness and performance.
Dr. Sebastian Steiner is a passionate mechatronics engineer with a lifetime of experience developing hardware and software for biomedical devices. He is known to take on projects that are socially responsible, for example technology reducing the need for animal testing or technology that bring new therapeutics to patients sooner. Recently, Dr. Steiner has been awarded patents for this work developing novel 3D Bioprinting technologies.
The research behind Bía
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