Leg Activity Monitor--for Better Sleep and Mental Health

Insomnia is a major mental health symptom related to depression, sleep loss, sleepiness,mistakes, accidents, irritability and anger. Major contributors to insomnia include periodic limbmovements (PLM) in sleep and restless legs (RL). Night-to-night variability and expensive, inconvenienttesting limits clinical and research work with these conditions. This project will develop technologyneeded to produce a self-contained, easily-used, ambulatory leg activity monitor (LAM) that will detectand record over several days the occurrence of characteristic periodic movements. The data, transferredto a Computer are analyzed for PLM and RL rates. This provides the first objective measurement of allnaturally occurring RL and of all PLM over several nights. The LAM technology uses piezoelectricsensors to detect activity and microprocessors to pre-process data by identification of candidate periodicmovements and storage of periodicity information. This permits recording all periodic movements for16 or more consecutive day. Phase 1 tests feasibility of accurately capturing and correctly identifyingall periodic movements. Phase 2 will serve to establish the LAM as a very user-friendly standard fordiagnosis, severity assessment, screening and treatment evaluation. The LAM may provide efficientearly detection of neuroleptic induced akathisia for psychiatric patients.