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Back to Andrew Huberman’s Three Rules for Better Health and Focus, with Andrew Huberman & Daisy Wolf.

How Can a Sleep Mask Put You to Sleep in Six Minutes?

Andrew Huberman fell asleep in six minutes with a sleep mask that puts you out by controlling eye movements through a little electrical stimulation behind the ear.

Branches of the vagus nerve run around the ear. Other vestibular nerves innervate the inner ear and travel close enough to the surface for stimulation, and the extraocular muscles can be reached the same way. The mask can also wake you up. Transitions into and out of sleep will be the first place neurotechnology really conquers the challenge, because the goal is exact: be asleep, be awake, or be alert. Sitting down for a particular kind of work is different. The patterns of brain activity for a task are still unclear. For focus, you want to be alert, but not too alert. Focus follows an inverted U-shaped function. Over the hump, you are highly distractible. Too sleepy, and you are highly distractible as well. The useful range is the sweet spot in the middle.

Ideal tools for falling asleep and waking up still are not in hand. One company might already have them. The first wins come where the needed state is obvious, which is sleep, before task focus.

Grokipedia·Andrew Huberman

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Andrew Huberman’s Three Rules for Better Health and Focus ·

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