Researchers develop new technique to insert topics into dreams

NIRMAL YESODA

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has claimed to have developed a new technique that could allow them to insert topics to someone’s dream. The research team has named this new technique ‘targeted dream incubation’, and they believe it could revolutionise how people dream in the future.

It has been previously found that lucid dreaming is a state where people would be aware of the fact that they are dreaming. During the research, scientists at MIT used a similar technique and targeted people during hypnagogia, a semi-lucid dream state just before a person falls asleep.

The technique used by MIT researchers to insert thoughts on people’s minds was very simple. During the state of hypnagogia, identified using sleep trackers, thoughts or objects were made audible to the sleepers via pre-recorded vocal prompts. It should be noted that hypnagogia is the time where a person will be more influenced by outside audio cues.

Interestingly, 67 per cent of the people who thought about a thing after hearing the audio prompt saw similar things in their dreams.

“Simply put, people tell us whether the prompts appear in their dream. Often, they are transformed — a ‘tree’ prompt becomes a tree-shaped car — but direct incorporation is easily identified,” said Adam Haar Horowitz, lead author of the study.

However, this technique seems very familiar to the traditional methods where people read their favourite book or watch an interesting TV show to see dreams that suit their likes.