Sleep Detectives project (46:16)

In this Health Research from Home webinar, we will hear from two projects that are using co-produced methods to monitor sleep patterns and brain activity in children and young people.

Matt Jones will introduce The Sleep Detectives Project, a Wellcome Trust-funded research exploring sleep, cognition and mental health in 6 to 18-year-old children and young people who are at genetically high risk of psychotic disorders.

The project focuses on those living with copy number variants (CNVs) that significantly increase the likelihood of conditions such as schizophrenia – reaching as high as 40 in 100 by adolescence.

He will discuss how residentials workshops and pilot protocols helped to lay the framework for the project, shaping both the methods and technologies used.

Matt will also highlight resources such as preprints and protocols available on the Open Science Framework, while reflecting on the ethical and methodological considerations of working with children, including information governance and best practice in PPIE following NIHR guidance.

Lorna Caddick, a Research Assistant at the University of Edinburgh, will then discuss the Ambient Teens Sleep Study, an MRC-funded project that used contactless radar-based sleep sensors compared against wearables.

This study used contactless sleep sensors drawing on radar sensing to record data from 48 adolescents aged 8-18 years over four weeks to assess feasibility and acceptability of these devices to be used in future work to better understand the relationship between sleep and the impact it has on health before, during and after puberty.