Sleep Stages

What are Sleep Stages in NapLab?

Every night, your body moves through distinct sleep stages that shape your overall rest. Understanding these stages helps you make sense of your sleep quality. NapLab enhances each stage in real time with adaptive, research-based sound technology.

AWAKE

During the Awake stage, your brain remains active and responsive to your surroundings. This phase occurs both before sleep onset and during brief awakenings throughout the night. These moments are normal and typically last only a few seconds, often without conscious awareness. Physiologically, your heart rate and breathing are more variable during this stage as your body transitions between states.

Sound support during the Awake stage focuses on reducing alertness and guiding the mind toward sleep. Research shows that low-frequency ambient tones in the 2–8 Hz entrainment range can help shift the brain from wakeful beta waves toward calmer alpha and theta patterns. NapLab uses real-time bio-feedback to detect micro-arousals and delivers soft, low-intensity soundscapes—such as gentle pink noise or slow harmonic textures—to help you fall asleep smoothly and return to sleep quickly after awakenings.

REM (Dream Sleep)

REM sleep is the stage where the brain becomes highly active, and most vivid dreaming occurs. Although the body remains physically still due to natural muscle atonia, the mind is deeply engaged in emotional regulation, creativity, and memory integration. Heart rate and breathing may become more irregular during this stage, reflecting heightened brain activity. REM sleep plays a critical role in mood balance, cognitive performance, and long-term learning.

Sound support during REM sleep must be subtle, non-intrusive, and stabilizing, as the brain is sensitive to external disturbances during this stage. Research suggests that gentle broadband noise, soft ambient textures, and low-modulation frequencies (around 8–12 Hz) can help maintain REM stability without disrupting dream cycles. NapLab adjusts sound dynamically using bio-feedback—monitoring micro-movements, respiration variance, and eyelid activity signals—to provide minimal but supportive auditory consistency. This ensures users remain in REM sleep comfortably, helping the brain complete essential emotional and cognitive processing.

CORE

Core sleep represents the stable, middle portion of the sleep cycle, supporting your brain’s cognitive maintenance and emotional regulation. During this stage, brain waves slow, breathing and heart rate settle into steady rhythms, and the body enters a calm restorative state. Core sleep contributes to memory consolidation, stress reduction, and improved attention during the day.

To stabilize Core sleep, NapLab uses balanced, low-intensity broadband frequencies (pink-to-brown noise spectrum with 0.1–4 Hz modulation). These sounds help mask environmental disturbances and maintain consistent brain rhythms. With bio-feedback, the app identifies early signs of restlessness—such as shifts in movement or changes in breathing—and introduces soft, adaptive soundscapes to keep users comfortably within this important stage of sleep.

DEEP (Slow-Wave Sleep)

Deep sleep—also known as slow-wave sleep—is the most physically restorative phase of the night. Brain activity slows into delta waves, and the body enters a state of intense repair: tissue regeneration, immune system strengthening, and metabolic recovery are all at their peak. Deep sleep is essential for waking up refreshed, improving physical performance, and ensuring stable energy levels throughout the day.

To support deep sleep, NapLab uses very low-frequency auditory stimulation aligned with delta-range rhythms (0.5–3 Hz). These frequencies have been shown to enhance slow-wave activity and extend the duration of deep sleep. NapLab’s bio-feedback engine introduces soft, rhythmic, low-frequency pulses only when beneficial, ensuring that auditory stimulation remains non-disruptive while encouraging deeper, more stable sleep. This supports improved next-day alertness, reduced sleep inertia, and overall higher-quality rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

We understand that you may have some questions before you start or talk to our AI NapLab agent. Feel free to ask anything about NapLab.

How does Naplab work?

NapLab analyses your breathing to predict your sleeping stage and provides you right frequency of sound at the right time so that you improve the quality of your sleep while you are sleeping.

Does it consider couples sharing a bed?

Although currently NapLab monitors only one user at a time, the unique soundscapes are designed to benefit both sleepers. It is absolutely fine to use NapLab when sharing the bed. It will benefit more to the person who is closer to the microphone, while adapting audio tailored to benefit both users.

How does NapLab analyse my natural sleep?

NapLab is an AI model that is trained on thousands of sleep cases and phenotypes. It helps you extend the stages of your sleep thus based on your sleeping behaviour and phenotypes data, it calculates your sleep quality with and without NapLab. The sleep quality without NapLab's audio stimulations is your predicted Natural Sleep based on your sleeping behaviour and phenotype data.

What is Enhanced Sleep?

NapLab monitors your sleep and provides sound stimulation to entrain your brain. This bio-hacking helps you extend core and deep stage sleep. The difference between your estimated natural sleep and the improvement with NapLab is your enhanced Sleep.

How can it improve sleep from the first use?

NapLab is trained on all phenotypes of all ages thus it is efficient in predicting your sleep behaviour. It estimates your Natural Sleep from the first sleeping session with Naplab.

What is REM, Core, Deep and Awake?

These are sleep stages that you cycle through during a sleep session. Rapid-eye-movement (REM) is stage where your eyes move rapidly making a dream or dream-like experience. Core sleep is a generally a transition of sleep where your brain starts to relax. Deep sleep if the stage where your brain starts to reenergise for the next day. A cycle typically involves Awake stage too, where your brain wakes you up before going into the next cycle of sleep. an average person makes 3-4 sleep cycles in an 8 hours of sleep.

Can this be a replacement for sleeping pills?

Not yet! But we are in a process of becoming a medically certified app for Sleep Quality Improvement. Prescribed medicines may have user specific solutions. We suggest using the app not as a replacement but as an assistance for medication. Our objective is to improve quality of your sleep.

Is my data secured with NapLab?

We collect data only related to your sleep and breath apart from your basic information. All data processed for NapLab is processed on your phone locally. We do not process your data on cloud servers. We use secured third party tools to secure your data. Besides, you have control over your data all the time.