MIT Tests 'Dream Incubation' Device That Manipulates the Content of People's Dreams
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
MIT Tests 'Dream Incubation' Device That Manipulates The Content of People's Dreams:
Scientists have developed an experimental device and protocol for manipulating the content of people's dreams while they are sleeping, by making them recall specific cues that can trigger targeted dream themes and experiences.
While the boundless dream-building of Inception remains the stuff of science fiction for now, the new research shows that the evolving science of dream control is far more than fantasy - and that information processing during sleep is capable of being engineered from the outside.
In a new study, a team led by neuroscientist Adam Haar Horowitz from MIT describes how a wearable electronic device - called Dormio - enables what the researchers term 'targeted dream incubation' (TDI), during the fluid first stage of sleep where the sleeper experiences a borderland state of consciousness called hypnagogia.
[...] As a person falls asleep wearing the device, audio cues are played via an associated app, such as "Remember to think of a tree" (the dream theme used in the experiment, conducted with 49 participants).
[...] "Targeted dream incubation is a protocol for reactivating memories during sleep in a manner that leads to incorporation of the targeted memory, or related memories, into dream content," the researchers explain in their paper.
Journal Reference:
Adam Haar Horowitz, Tony J.Cunningham, Pattie Maes, Robert Stickgold. Dormio: A targeted dream incubation device, Consciousness and Cognition (DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102938)
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