Dream-shaping tech from MIT channels suggestions into your dreams

From Live Science.com (Sept. 25, 2020):

MIT scientists have figured out how to manipulate your dreams by combining an app with a sleep-tracking device called Dormio. In their new study, the researchers were able to insert certain topics into a person's dreams, with some pretty bizarre outcomes.

To do so, the researchers at MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces — a group that develops wearable systems and interfaces to enhance cognitive skills — used a technique called targeted dream incubation (TDI).

Prior studies have shown that during a rare dream state known lucid dreaming, in which a sleeper is aware that a dream is taking place, dreamers can use that awareness to consciously shape aspects of their dreams. TDI takes advantage of an early sleep stage, known as hypnagogia, to achieve a similar result (though not quite "controlling" dreams outright), researchers told Live Science.

During hypnagogia — a semi-lucid dream state that occurs during the onset of sleep — TDI introduced "targeted information" to a sleeper, "enabling direct incorporation of this information into dream content," the scientists wrote in a new study, published in the August issue of the journal Consciousness and Cognition. They conducted dream experiments by performing "serial awakenings" during daytime napping sessions in 25 participants.

Subjects first recorded audio prompts in an app, such as, "remember to think of a tree" and "remember to observe your thoughts," and then prepared for sleep, according to the study.

A hand-worn sleep tracker monitored the subject's heart rate, electrical changes on the skin surface, and the amount their fingers were bent or relaxed, to detect when a sleeper entered hypnagogia and was therefore "open to influence from outside audio cues," said lead study author Adam Haar Horowitz, a doctoral candidate in MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group. The Dormio sleep tracker communicated with the app, "which delivers audio at the correct times, and records audio of dream reports" when the subject is awake, Haar Horowitz told Live Science in an email.

Just as a subject drifted off to sleep and entered hypnagogia, Dormio would coordinate with the app to wake them up with the pre-recorded prompts. This cycle repeated several times, with the sleeper also recording a brief "dream journal" entry into the app when they were awakened.

"Simply put, people tell us whether the prompts appear in their dream," Haar Horowitz said. "Often, they are transformed — a 'tree' prompt becomes a tree-shaped car — but direct incorporation is easily identified."

The scientists found that 67% of the subjects' dream reports mentioned dreams that incorporated a tree. "I was following the roots with someone and the roots were transporting me to different locations," one participant recalled. Another mentioned "a tree from my childhood, from my backyard. It never asked for anything." The same subject, in later awakenings, described "trees splitting into infinite pieces" and "a shaman, sitting under the tree with me, he tells me to go to South America."

"Dream reports increased in bizarreness and immersion with each awakening," but the scientists did not develop a universal rating system for the bizarreness of the dreams, the study authors reported. [read more]

Sci-fi to sci-fact. The benefits and drawbacks of the tech from Grok:

MIT's TDI/Dormio tech offers exciting opportunities for creativity boosts, therapy, and self-understanding by bridging waking intention with dreaming. However, it comes with ethical pitfalls around autonomy, privacy, and unintended psychological effects. As dream engineering advances, balancing benefits with safeguards (as the MIT team has discussed in their ethics work) will be crucial. More independent, long-term studies are needed before widespread adoption.