Can Wearable Trackers Support Brain Health?

Devices aim to help monitor sleep, exercise and stress levels

Christine Richmond

Updated January 22, 2026

A finger pointing at a smartwatch on a person’s wrist

Guido Mieth/Getty Images

Before the first Fitbit launched in 2009, you probably never thought about your daily step count. Today, many smartphones have built-in pedometers, and a variety of wearable devices aim to track many other health metrics, from heart rate to sleep patterns.

The technologies can provide useful feedback, even though their accuracy can vary depending on brand, activity and other factors. By giving you a window into what’s happening in your body, wearables may inspire you to start or stick with healthy habits that can support brain health: ongoing exercise, quality sleep and stress management.

To be clear, wearables improve your health only if you do something with the information they give you — and you keep using them.

“Just putting on a wearable does not make you magically more physically active,” says Jennifer Gierisch, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center. “They are a facilitator of change, and they can be very powerful for people who attend to [the] feedback they provide.”

Here’s a look at some of the devices and how they work:

Fitness trackers

Fitness-tracking watches and bands promise to monitor your daily step count and vitals like heart rate, energy expenditure and oxygen levels, depending on the gadget. Brands include the Fitbit, Apple and Garmin.

“People can use them to understand how active they are — or, even more importantly, how active they aren’t,” says Jennifer A. Schrack, director of the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health. “A lot of older adults are more active in the morning and then it tends to trail off.”

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If your wearable data reveals that you sit more as the day progresses, try squeezing in a brief walk after dinner, Schrack suggests.

You may be doing better than you think. In an analysis of 24 reviews published in Sports Medicine in 2024, wearables tended to underestimate step counts by about 10 percent on average, though the error rate can vary a lot depending on the device and activity.

Sleep trackers

By logging metrics like body temperature, heart rate and movement patterns, sleep trackers like the Oura Ring, Whoop band and Galaxy Watch aim to tell you how long it takes you to fall asleep, how long you spend in each stage of sleep, and how often you wake during the night.

In a randomized controlled trial of 103 people with insomnia, average age 47, those who received feedback from sleep trackers for five weeks reported fewer sleep disturbances than those who wore a device but got no feedback. That study was reported in the journal Sleep in 2023.

In the Sports Medicine review, however, sleep wearables tended to overestimate sleep time by more than 10 percent.

Not everything the sleep trackers measure is useful. Take REM or “rapid eye movement” sleep. It’s considered an important sleep stage for maintaining emotional well-being, but the benefits of tracking how much REM you get are not clear.

In fact, “There is no evidence that remedying REM sleep ‘insufficiency’ has therapeutic benefit,” the World Sleep Society, an independent group of sleep health experts, stated in a 2025 report in Sleep Medicine.

Stress monitors

There are a range of wearable devices and apps — watches, chest bands, finger sensors, patches, pins — that promise to help users manage stress. They can be effective if used properly, according to a review of 40 studies published in Healthcare in 2023.

The devices generally work by helping people pinpoint stress symptoms, such as changes in heart rate or body temperature. Many apps prompt the user to do muscle relaxation, mindfulness and breathing exercises in response to stressors.

Some wearables may also support meditation, a powerful way to improve mood. EEG headbands and headsets such as Muse, Emotiv or FocusCalm give real-time feedback on brainwave activity related to attention and relaxation.

The best device is one you’ll use

If you’re new to the world of wearables, make sure you choose a gadget that’s comfortable and easy to use.

“You can have the best device in the world, but if [you] won’t wear it, it’s useless,” Schrack says.

Many wearables will show you how your data compares to other people your age, she says. If your device flags something as abnormal, bring it up with your doctor.

Using Wearables to Detect Alzheimer’s

Changes to a person’s movement patterns and sleep-wake rhythms can be subtle early warning signs of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Wearable devices that track these metrics could allow for earlier evaluation by a doctor, which may help identify people at risk of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, some research suggests.

In a study involving 82 adults with normal cognition, average age about 76, participants were asked to wear a device called an actigraph, which measures daily activity like movement and steps, 24 hours a day for a week. They also got brain scans, which revealed that 25 of them had abnormal buildup of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These proteins typically accumulate for years before symptoms emerge.

The results, published in the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences in 2024, found that the 25 participants were more active in the afternoon and evening than the participants with normal brain scans. “People with dementia tend to be less active in the morning and more active in the evening, which is possibly a sign of agitation and poor sleep,” Schrack says. Wearable technology, she explains, can pick up on these patterns.