Actigraphy as an objective measure of sleep and wakefulness in infants and children has gained popularity over the last 20 years. However, the field lacks published guidelines for sleep-wake identification within pediatric age groups. The scoring rules vary greatly and although sensitivity (sleep agreement with polysomnography) is usually high, a significant limitation remains in relation to sp...

Measurement is as fundamental to modern sport as it is to science. The outcomes of Olympic trials and competitions are sometimes determined by tenths or hundredths of a second. Athletic training typically entails performance measurement in order to guide and enhance training methods. Better performance is often its own reward – that is, observing improvements may strongly motivate competitive a...

Delirium after cardiac surgery is a risk factor for adverse outcome and even death. Disturbance of motor activity is a core feature of delirium, but hypoactive delirium often remains unrecognized. We explored wrist-actigraphy as a tool to objectively quantify postoperative recovery of 24-h rest-activity patterns to improve the early recognition of delirium after surgery. Motor activity was reco...

Disorganized behavior is a key symptom of schizophrenia. The objective assessment of disorganized behavior is particularly challenging. Actigraphy has enabled the objective assessment of motor behavior in various settings. Reduced motor activity was associated with negative syndrome scores, but simple motor activity analyses were not informative on other symptom dimensions. The analysis of move...

Based on previous findings of frequent sleep problems in children with Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS), the present study aimed to expand our knowledge by using parent report and actigraphy to define sleep problems more precisely in these groups. Twenty-two school-aged children with DS, 24 with WS and 52 typically developing (TD) children took part in the study. Each child wore an...

The importance of sleep is paramount for maintaining physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. Though the relationship between sleep and physical activity is known to be important, it is not yet fully understood. The explosion in popularity of actigraphy and wearable devices, provides a unique opportunity to understand this relationship. Leveraging this information source requires new tools to ...

OBJECTIVES The goals of this study were to assess: (a) the involvement of fathers and mothers in overall and nighttime infant caregiving; (b) the links between paternal involvement in infant care and infant sleep patterns during the first 6 months. METHODS Fifty-six couples recruited during their first pregnancy, participated in the study. After delivery (1 and 6 months), both parents complet...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To quantitatively assess compliance and experimental success with imposed sleep schedules among healthy children involved in an experimental comparison of optimized and restricted sleep. DESIGN We asked children to follow assigned sleep schedules at home that created optimized (at least 10 hours time-in-bed per night) and restricted (6.5 to 8 hours time-in-bed per night) slee...

Sleep in children can be assessed using a variety of methods. Direct observations, self-reports, parental reports, time-lapse video, actigraphy, and polysomnography have been repeatedly used in pediatric sleep research and clinical practice. Parental reports have always been a main source of information on children’s sleep. Caregiver observations, in questionnaire or diary format, can provide d...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To describe parent-reported and actigraphically assessed sleep patterns and sleep disorders in stimulant-medication-free children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), divided according to ADHD subtype. PARTICIPANTS Seventy-one stimulant-medication-free children with a clinical diagnosis of ADHD (8 girls; mean 8.8 years (SD 2.6), range 3-15 years) recruited fro...