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Abstract Introduction Current hypnotic agents have next‐day residual effects. The new orexin antagonist, suvorexant, has little muscle relaxation effect on the physical and cognitive function in the following morning and daytime. In this study, the effects of suvorexant, zolpidem, ramelteon and placebo in elderly subjects were evaluated. Methods Six men and eight women aged 63–75 years received a single tablet and lights were then turned off. Subjects were instructed to sleep from 23:00–6:00 with an interruption from 4:00–4:30 for evaluations. Suvorexant 10 mg, zolpidem 5 mg, ramelteon 4 mg or placebo was administered single time in a randomized, double‐blind and crossover design with a one‐week drug holiday in between each drug. Measures of objective parameters and subjective ratings were obtained every 2 h from 4:00 to 16:00. Result No subjects showed serious side effects from physical observations and vital sign checks before and after hypnotics were taken. During the first sleep period, the REM sleep time with suvorexant was especially longer than that with zolpidem. During the second sleep period, suvorexant had shorter sleep latency and longer stage2 sleep time than ramelteon and zolpidem, respectively. During the whole entire sleep, the REM sleep time with suvorexant was longer than zolpidem and placebo. For the body sway test with closed eye, the main effects of the medicines and zolpidem were significantly better than suvorexant and ramelteon. Conclusion The changes of physical and cognitive functions in healthy elderly after taking hypnotics were not remarkable. Therefore, these three hypnotics maybe appropriate for the elderly people with insomnia for single‐time low dose administration.

[Purpose] There have been no reports in which the activity of the upper extremity has been assessed quantitatively in the sitting position. This study aimed to examine the daily activity of the upper extremity in the sitting position using two different accelerometers. [Methods] In the first experiment, young healthy students wore accelerometers. The activities in the sitting position were videotaped and analyzed, then the level of activities was determined. In the second experiment, the activities of the upper extremity in everyday life were monitored by an accelerometer and total sitting time, the activity time and the percentage of the upper extremity activity in each activity were analyzed. [Results] In the first experiment, there was strong significant correlation between the times measured by the accelerometers and the videotape. There were no additional or proportional errors in the level of times measured by the two methods. In the second experiment, even for the young healthy students, activity was at a low level for the majority of the total sitting time. [Conclusions] The activities of the upper extremity were divided into three categories according to their strength using two different accelerometers. Furthermore, the daily activity of the upper extremity in actual life could be evaluated according to its level of strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]