Influence of sex hormone use on sleep architecture in a transgender cohort.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Sex differences in sleep architecture are well-documented, with females experiencing longer total sleep time, more slow wave sleep (SWS), and shorter Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep duration than males. Although studies imply that sex hormones could affect sleep, research on exogenous sex hormones on sleep architecture is still inconclusive. This study examined sleep architecture changes in transgender individuals after 3 months of gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT). METHODS: We assessed sleep architecture in 73 transgender individuals: 38 transmasculine participants who started using testosterone and 35 transfeminine participants who started using estrogens and antiandrogens. Sleep architecture was measured before GAHT and after 3 months of GAHT for 7 nights using an ambulatory single-electrode sleep EEG device. Changes in sleep architecture were analyzed using linear mixed models, and non-normally distributed outcomes were log-transformed and reported as percentages. RESULTS: In transmasculine participants, SWS decreased by 7 minutes (95% CI: -12; -3) and 1.7% (95% CI: -3%; -0.5%), REM sleep latency decreased by 39% (95% CI: -52%; -22%) and REM sleep duration increased by 17 minutes (95% CI: 7; 26) after 3 months of GAHT. In transfeminine participants, sleep architecture showed no significant changes after 3 months of GAHT. CONCLUSIONS: Sleep architecture changes after 3 months of masculinizing GAHT in line with sleep in cisgender males, while it shows no changes after feminizing GAHT. The sex-specific nature of these changes raises new questions about sex hormones and sleep. Future research should focus on studying possible underlying neural mechanisms and clinical consequences of these changes.

Deep transfer learning for automated single-lead EEG sleep staging with channel and population mismatches.

Introduction: Automated sleep staging using deep learning models typically requires training on hundreds of sleep recordings, and pre-training on public databases is therefore common practice. However, suboptimal sleep stage performance may occur from mismatches between source and target datasets, such as differences in population characteristics (e.g., an unrepresented sleep disorder) or sensors (e.g., alternative channel locations for wearable EEG). Methods: We investigated three strategies for training an automated single-channel EEG sleep stager: pre-training (i.e., training on the original source dataset), training-from-scratch (i.e., training on the new target dataset), and fine-tuning (i.e., training on the original source dataset, fine-tuning on the new target dataset). As source dataset, we used the F3-M2 channel of healthy subjects (N = 94). Performance of the different training strategies was evaluated using Cohen's Kappa (κ) in eight smaller target datasets consisting of healthy subjects (N = 60), patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA, N = 60), insomnia (N = 60), and REM sleep behavioral disorder (RBD, N = 22), combined with two EEG channels, F3-M2 and F3-F4. Results: No differences in performance between the training strategies was observed in the age-matched F3-M2 datasets, with an average performance across strategies of κ = .83 in healthy, κ = .77 in insomnia, and κ = .74 in OSA subjects. However, in the RBD set, where data availability was limited, fine-tuning was the preferred method (κ = .67), with an average increase in κ of .15 to pre-training and training-from-scratch. In the presence of channel mismatches, targeted training is required, either through training-from-scratch or fine-tuning, increasing performance with κ = .17 on average. Discussion: We found that, when channel and/or population mismatches cause suboptimal sleep staging performance, a fine-tuning approach can yield similar to superior performance compared to building a model from scratch, while requiring a smaller sample size. In contrast to insomnia and OSA, RBD data contains characteristics, either inherent to the pathology or age-related, which apparently demand targeted training.

A short pulse (7 micros FWHM) and high repetition rate (dc-5 kHz) cantilever piezovalve for pulsed atomic and molecular beams.

In this paper we report on the design and operation of a novel piezovalve for the production of short pulsed atomic or molecular beams. The high speed valve operates on the principle of a cantilever piezo. The only moving part, besides the cantilever piezo itself, is a very small O-ring that forms the vacuum seal. The valve can operate continuous (dc) and in pulsed mode with the same drive electronics. Pulsed operation has been tested at repetition frequencies up to 5 kHz. The static deflection of the cantilever, as mounted in the valve body, was measured as a function of driving field strength with a confocal microscope. The deflection and high speed dynamical response of the cantilever can be easily changed and optimized for a particular nozzle diameter or repetition rate by a simple adjustment of the free cantilever length. Pulsed molecular beams with a full width at half maximum pulse width as low as 7 micros have been measured at a position 10 cm downstream of the nozzle exit. This represents a gas pulse with a length of only 10 mm making it well matched to for instance experiments using laser beams. Such a short pulse with 6 bar backing pressure behind a 150 microm nozzle releases about 10(16) particles/pulse and the beam brightness was estimated to be 4x10(22) particles/(s str). The short pulses of the cantilever piezovalve result in a much reduced gas load in the vacuum system. We demonstrate operation of the pulsed valve with skimmer in a single vacuum chamber pumped by a 520 l/s turbomolecular pump maintaining a pressure of 5x10(-6) Torr, which is an excellent vacuum to have the strong and cold skimmed molecular beam interact with laser beams only 10 cm downstream of the nozzle to do velocity map slice imaging with a microchannel-plate imaging detector in a single chamber. The piezovalve produces cold and narrow (Delta v/v=2%-3%) velocity distributions of molecules seeded in helium or neon at modest backing pressures of only 6 bar. The low gas load of the cantilever valve makes it possible to design very compact single chamber molecular beam machines with high quality cold and intense supersonic beams. The high speed cantilever piezovalve may find broad applicability in experiments where short and strong gas pulses are needed with only modest pumping, the effective use of (expensive) samples, or the production of cold atomic and molecular beams.