Robust evaluation of time since awakening using force platform posturography

INTRODUCTION: Sleepiness is responsible for a considerable proportion of traffic accidents. It is thus an important traffic safety issue to find a robust, objective and practical way to estimate the amount of time a person has been awake. To attempt to meet this goal, we investigated the relationship between sleepiness and posture control. METHODS: Subjects were kept awake for 36 hours and posturographic data during quiet standing were collected every two hours by means of a force platform. The standing surface (rigid surface or foam surface) and visual (eyes open or eyes closed) conditions were manipulated. RESULTS: In the more challenging conditions (with foam surface and/or eyes closed), the body sway variables derived from the center of the pressure measurement increased significantly when time since awakening became greater than 21 h in almost all subjects. CONCLUSION: Based on this result, we propose a practical protocol that could robustly assess whether time since awakening was greater than 21 h.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Pham,Quang-Cuong, Mello,Marco Túlio de, Narciso,Fernanda Veruska, Mônico Neto,Marcos, Teixeira,Cristiane Westin, Antonietti,Leandro Stetner, Garbuio,Silvério Aparecido, Fernandes Júnior,Sílvio de Araújo, Koyama,Renata Guedes, Duarte,Marcos, Tufik,Sérgio
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	English
Published:	SBEB - Sociedade Brasileira de Engenharia Biomédica 2014
Online Access:	http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1517-31512014000400005
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!