The Sleep Disorders Channel is supported through educational grants from Alkermes and Takeda.
VJNeurology is an independent medical education platform. Channel supporters have no influence over the production of content.
SLEEP 2026 | Tools for assessing circadian function in clinical practice and research
Colleen McClung, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, discusses the tools available to assess circadian function in clinical practice and research. She highlights the use of questionnaires, wearable devices, and emerging data-driven algorithms to evaluate sleep patterns, chronotype, and circadian rhythms. This interview took place at the 40th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) in Baltimore, MD.
These works are owned by Magdalen Medical Publishing (MMP) and are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All rights are reserved.
Transcript
So there are several different tools that can be used right now. There’s simple questionnaires, so there’s chronotype questionnaires, there are sleep questionnaires, like the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. There are several different questionnaires that physicians can use to assess general circadian and sleep function, in terms of whether somebody is a night owl or a morning lark, or what sort of sleep they’re getting in general...
So there are several different tools that can be used right now. There’s simple questionnaires, so there’s chronotype questionnaires, there are sleep questionnaires, like the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. There are several different questionnaires that physicians can use to assess general circadian and sleep function, in terms of whether somebody is a night owl or a morning lark, or what sort of sleep they’re getting in general. Beyond that, there are tools that involve wearable devices, such as an Apple Watch, Fitbit, or actigraphy, that can be used to track circadian rhythms, sleep, and activity over time. There are also a lot of companies now developing different algorithms to look at that data and assess people’s circadian rhythms based on the wearable data. So those are really the main ways that clinicians can track sleep and circadian rhythms in the clinic.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
Read more...
