Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Wearables
  4. News

The Urgonight headband trains your brain waves for better sleep

Add as a preferred source on Google
urgonight
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Many of us suffer from sleep deficiency and/or poor quality sleep. That being considered, CES 2019 is really shaping up to be a great year for sleep tech. One of the companies aiming to help us rest better is Urgonight, which is showing off its non-invasive headband at the show, aiming to help train our brains to sleep better.

More CES 2019 coverage

Developed by French startup Urgo Group, the headband connects to an app that is worn during three 20-minute sessions each week. During these sessions, the band takes an EEG (electroencephalogram) of your brain and then presents the data on your screen in such a way that helps to train your brain waves to act in a certain manner, a technique known as visual neurofeedback.

Recommended Videos

Urgo says that viewing these special images at least three times a week for those 20 minutes helps develop healthier sleep patterns in as little as three months. Since this is all done during waking hours — and there’s no need to wear the headband during the night — getting better sleep doesn’t require making yourself uncomfortable in the process.

This is great news. Insomniacs know any kind of disruption can make your insomnia worse — whether it be sounds, light, or touch — so instead of wearing something or listening to something at night, you can focus on whatever you need to do in order to make yourself as comfortable as possible naturally.

“Urgonight allows consumers to fit in exercises for sleep in whatever timing or habits that are best suited for their lifestyles,” Urgo founder Guirec Le Lous said in a statement.

Urgo’s research showed that patients were on average falling asleep 40 percent faster, reducing the number of times they woke up during the night by more than half after completing a training cycle. Urgo also suggests you repeat a series of sessions three months after you complete your last one to maintain the positive effects.

There’s one negative though, and that’s the price: $600. But for those of us that may have spent tons of money on medications, sleep studies, self-help materials and whatever else to try and get a good night’s sleep, it doesn’t seem like a high price to pay. Pre-orders are expected to begin in the spring, with delivery coming by the end of the year.

Ed Oswald
For fifteen years, Ed has written about the latest and greatest in gadgets and technology trends. At Digital Trends, he's…
You can now choose how hard Claude thinks before answering your queries
For the first time, Claude users can decide whether their AI assistant thinks fast or thinks deep.
Page, Text, Business Card

Anthropic just released Claude Opus 4.8, and while the benchmark improvements are quite real, the most meaningful change for everyday users is something far simpler. 

You can now tell Claude how hard to think before it responds to your query. Along with that, dynamic workflows are now available in research preview for Enterprise, Team, and Max plan users. 

Read more
Just like humans, this robot can hear music and play it after just two minutes of self-practice
The successful experimentation points toward a new model for rehabilitation robotics, based on experiential learning.
A robotic hand.

In a neuro-robotics lab at the University of Southern California, a small mechanical hand heard a melody for the first time and played it back in a single attempt, without any sheet music, pre-loaded scores, or weeks of supervised training and practice (via USC Viterbi). 

The system is called the Musician Hand. It has four fingers, each moved by a tendon connected to a small electric motor, mirroring how muscles actually pull tendons in a human hand. It was built by doctoral candidate Hesam Azadjou under the direction of Professor Francisco Valero-Cuevas. 

Read more
Starlink Mini may finally cut the cord with a battery-powered dish
SpaceX is fixing the biggest portable problem with Starlink
A Starlink dish.

Starlink Mini is already the version of SpaceX’s internet dish built for on-the-go connectivity. It has found its fans in travelers, campers, vanlifers, and others who live off the grid. But new firmware clues suggest SpaceX may be getting ready to make it even more portable by putting the battery inside the dish itself.

According to a PCMag report, university researcher Jinwei Zhao spotted new Starlink firmware strings that point toward a possible Starlink Mini model with an integrated battery. The key clue is a new DishBatteryStats reference, which appears designed to return battery-specific information rather than simply detect that the dish is plugged into some random external power bank.

Read more