Microphone picks up pillow talk

A pillow which uses speech recognition software to record people's worries when they cannot get to sleep has been invented by an Edinburgh student. The sleep microphone, which was created by Edinburgh Napier University student, Nekani Guezala, 23, has been unveiled at a special exhibition in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Napier's Creative Showcase, which exhibits other design students work, runs until Friday. People talk aloud as they try to get to sleep while the machine records. The next morning the machine prints out all the problems the person was worrying about just before they fell asleep.

Ms Guezala, who is from Bilbao in Spain, said she was "very excited" about her design master's project.



She said: "One night I was lying awake worrying about what I was going to do with my life and I came up with the idea because people are better in the morning and so if they were reminded about all the things they were thinking about the night before they could work through it better in the morning.

"I did a questionnaire and found on average that people spent 40 minutes worrying at night before they fell asleep.

"I also spoke to a psychologist who said that when his patients come to him complaining about sleep problems then he recommends they write down at the time what they are worrying about, whereas now they could just talk out loud and the sleep microphone would pick it up and print it all out in the morning."