REVIEW article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Sleep and Circadian Rhythms
This article is part of the Research TopicMethods to Modulate Sleep with Neurotechnology, Devices, or WearablesView all 6 articles
Acoustic Stimulation and Other Emerging Approaches to Enhance Sleep: Design Notes for the Next Generation of Closed-loop Neurostimulation Technology
Provisionally accepted
- 1Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, United States
- 2Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering, Baltimore, United States
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Abstract. Sleep is indispensable to human health, supporting memory consolidation, emotional regulation, immune function, and metabolic homeostasis. Despite its importance, chronic sleep disturbances are pervasive, with especially high prevalence in operational and clinical populations. This review synthesizes recent advances in sleep enhancement through closed-loop neurostimulation, focusing on systems that dynamically interact with endogenous brain rhythms to improve sleep quality and efficiency. Key oscillatory targets—including slow waves, sleep spindles, and hippocampal ripples—are examined in the context of memory consolidation, with evidence supporting their augmentation via temporally precise auditory and electrical stimulation. Complementary methods targeting rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and sleep onset latency are discussed, underscoring the versatility of closed-loop systems. The review identifies outstanding questions regarding stimulation timing, modality selection, physiological limits, and the dissociation between slow oscillations and delta activity. To address these challenges, we advocate for a modular, open-source ecosystem that integrates real-time sleep state decoding with configurable effectors across auditory, electrical, and other domains. Such a platform would enable reproducible, scalable, and personalized interventions for sleep enhancement. This systems-level approach is aimed at accelerating translational research and catalyzing a paradigm shift toward actively regulated, on-demand sleep interventions.
Keywords: Sleep, Acoustic Stimulation, closed-loop stimulation, neurostimulation, spindles, Slow wave sleep (sws), slow oscillation
Received: 08 Aug 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nilsson, Reid, Smith and Coon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sophie J Nilsson
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