Bra-Bo Stim

BRAIN-BODY AXIS AT YOUR WRIST - QUANTIFYING EFFECTS OF BRAINSTIMULATION WITH WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

Summary

Wearables, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, have become increasingly popular inrecent years. Their sensors offer a range of features including heart rate monitoring, step tracking,and notifications. More advanced research-grade wearables such as the Empatica Embrace Plussystem (Empatica Inc, Boston, MA, USA), Byteflies (Byteflies, Antwerpen, Belgium) and theOpenBCI's Emotibit (Brooklyn, New York, USA) collects several data of the wearer's physiologyand environment, including photoplethysmography (PPG), electrodermal activity (EDA), skintemperature (TEMP), accelerometry (ACC), and sleep tracking. Wearable devices provide a setof noteworthy advantages, such as non-invasive data collection, continues monitoring innaturalistic environments, real-time data collection, and cost-effective sampling of large samplesizes. By monitoring vital signs and physical activity levels, wearables can provide insights into apatient's health status and help identify potential problems before they become more serious. Inturn, they have great potential in monitoring disease conditions and the effects of therapeuticintervention.

Indeed, wearable devices are being evaluated by the lab of Andreas Schulze-Bonhage forimproving epilepsy management by providing real-time monitoring and alerting, continuous datacollection, and improved medication management. However, more research is needed to fullyunderstand their potential benefits and limitations, and to ensure that they are used effectively.

In this context it remains unclear to which degree body parameters obtained with sensors at thewrist relate to or even reflect complex brain functions such as the ability of the human brain toexpress plasticity (=brain-body axis). Joining the well-documented expertise of the Vlachos lab(Research Area A) and Schulze-Bonhage lab (Research Area C) in the fields of brain stimulation and wearable devices the major aim of this project is to assess the use of wearables to predictand monitor the outcome of clinically employed brain stimulation techniques in healthy subjects;toward the use of wearables in monitoring successful application of brain stimulation and otherinterventions of healthy subjects and patients.