The present disclosure pertains to automatically predicting a slow wave response of a subject to sensory stimulation during a sleep session. The sensory stimulation may be delivered to the subject upon detection of deep NREM sleep. The sensory stimulation may be auditory, haptic, visual, or other stimulation. The system delivers stimulation to the subject in blocks of stimulation separated from one another be intra-block intervals. The blocks are separated from each other by inter-block stimulations. The system compares the stimulated slow wave activity of the subject to the unstimulated slow wave activity of the subject. The system may update the stimulation parameters based on the comparison and deliver a subsequent block stimulation. Once the comparison indicates that the stimulated slow wave activity is significantly different from the unstimulated slow wave activity, the system may apply continuous fixed sensory stimulation to the user according to the most recent stimulation parameters.