Preprint on large-scale wearable sleep data
Our colleague Annika Rose is the lead author of a new preprint that analyzes the largest dataset on sleep ever collected in Germany. The study “Large-scale wearable data reveal spatiotemporal organization of annual sleep patterns” is available on bioRxiv and is currently being revised for submission to Nature Communications.
Annika and her team analyzed more than 45 million nights of sleep data from over 100,000 people collected in the Robert Koch Institute’s Corona Data Donation project. The results show clear east–west and north–south differences in sleep: people in western Germany go to bed and wake up later than those in the east. In the north, people sleep less and experience stronger social jetlag. The study also identifies strong seasonal rhythms, with longer sleep in winter and shorter sleep in summer.
Beyond these regional findings, the study demonstrates how large-scale wearable data can serve as a framework to understand circadian regulation at the population level. This perspective highlights both the broader scientific relevance of the work and its potential applications beyond Germany.
