Scientists from MIT have developed a protocol and experimental device for controlling dreams when people sleep. Their method involved making their participants recall specific cues that can trigger a specific theme for the dream.
The dream-building concept by the movie Inception may no longer be a thing of science fiction as this new device from MIT shows that the evolving science of controlling dreams could become possible, and also information processing during the sleep can be engineered from the outside.
Neuroscientist Adam Haar Horowitz from MIT led a team in this new study. They described how a wearable electronic device, known as Dormio, allows 'targeted dream incubation' (TDI) during the first stage of sleep where the person experiences hypnagogia or the borderline state of consciousness.
Horowitz explained that during hypnagogia, the mind is trippy, loose, flexible, and divergent. "It's like turning the notch up high on mind-wandering and making it immersive--being pushed and pulled with new sensations like your body floating and falling, with your thoughts quickly snapping in and out of control."
A New Device That Can Control Dreams
REM Sleep and hypnagogia are similar in some ways of their fluid dream-like sensations. However, with hypnagogia, the person in this stage can still hear and process voices or sound as they transition from being awake to being asleep.
Moreover, TDI also has a lot in common with the experimental method called targeted memory reactivation (TMR). But with TDI, it has a lot of applications for learning that may improve memory with the specific advantage of the Dormio device that is worn on the wrist like a glove full of sensory equipment.
In the study, the participants would hear an audio recording played through an associated app, like a voice saying "remember to think of a tree," as they start to drift in their sleep. The tree is the theme used in all 49 participants in the study.
Dormio would find physiological data saying that the person has finally fallen asleep. At that point, the device rouses the participants from time to time to ask them what they see in their sleep. The app then records their verbal report.
Then, the participants would return to sleep for a short while. The experiment repeats the procedure from a series of repeated dreams, then to the awakenings, and prompted recordings. This method is centered on the state of directed hypnagogia.
In their paper, the researchers wrote that the targeted dream incubation is a necessary step to reactivate memories during sleep in a way that it would lead to the incorporation of the targeted memory or related memories in the dream content.
"The aim of the current study is to assess the ability of Dormio to identify the sleep onset period and successfully manipulate the content of hypnagogic dream report through pre-sleep verbal prompts," they added.
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Successful Dream Manipulation
Although Dormio is still being refined, the experimental results suggest that it successfully influenced dreams and can record their contents to a specific level.
In fact, 67 percent of the results mentioned references to a tree after the hypnagogic state. One participant said that he did see a tree in his dream as he was following the roots that have transported him to different places.
However, the dreams of those participants in the control group who were only prompted to observe their thought have shown almost no references to trees.
The researchers said that Dormio could also be used for learning techniques that involve sleep-based memory consolidation, or as an instrument to help improve creativity and problem-solving.
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