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MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

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Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#91

Post by danielskogly »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #20

Sleep As Android can do this same thing. It uses your microphone/accelerometer to sense motion and estimate when you're entering REM sleep. It's not as advanced as the more complicated set up here, but anecdotally I can say it works fairly well. You can set it to play a trigger phrase when you enter REM sleep to help train lucid dreaming. I've never done it though because they default trigger phrase included is downr…

I still remember being scared awake by that audio loop many years ago. Lucid dreaming had caught my attention for a while, and when they released the lucid dreaming feature I thought I'd give it a go. The media volume on my phone being set to maximum definitively did not help when that creepy voice wrought me out of sleep and I haven't tried it since. I wonder if it actually works, but can't really try it out nowadays as I'm not sleeping alone.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#92

Post by nathancahill »

babygoat wrote: post #70
jxub wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have you developed that faculty?

I read somewhere that Thomas Edison used to take naps with ball bearings in his hands. At the instant he fell asleep, the bearings rolled out of his hands and hit the floor and woke him up during this transition state.

My farmer friends call it a "spoon nap" sit in a chair holding a spoon, as soon as you fall asleep the spoon drops and you can get back to work. Typically taken directly after a big lunch.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#93

Post by veli_joza »

basementcat wrote: post #34
OnMyPhone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not who you're replaying to, but... When I was learning how to lucid dream, one of the triggers that I used to tell I was in a dream was flipping a light switch on and off. When I saw nothing happened, I knew it was a dream. Another big one I use is looking at any words, numbers or clocks to see if they were legit, or random characters / garbage. I started to "feel" what a lucid dream was because I would get some…

+1 on looking at words. I once was having dinner with a girl and the topic of conversation drifted to dreams and how one might tell if one is in an "Inception" type scenario. I used the menu as an example-- read a line from the menu, close the booklet, reopen and reread the same line. I told her if the two lines aren't the same line, you're dreaming (the rendering hardware in your brain apparently uses different PRNG…

I like your explanation for changing lines of text, but I don't think brain is actively generating any content. I think brain is just trying its best to apply daytime pattern recognition to un-orchestrated neural activity. The most recently learned patterns are the strongest, which is why often you'll dream stuff that happened that day. If you spend a lot of time performing single activity (like gaming), the dream will be intensive and focused; this is called the Tetris effect.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#94

Post by jl2718 »

donttrack wrote: post #67
veli_joza wrote: post #2

I was introduced to this phenomenon through Kurzweil's book "How to create a mind". He claims that the brain is massively parallelized pattern recognition machine, with consciousness being a censor that filters results. While in hypnagogia, this censoring function is suppressed and you are able to make "unthinkable" connections between ideas you normally think are unrelated. Of course, you should just take notes of t…

Hypnagogia.. Didn't hear that word before. I get that a lot and tried to explain it to other people, but nobody seem to understand what I am talking about. It feels like I am dreaming while I am still awake in some kind of transitional state, where I am not conscious and also not asleep. It is not the same as lucid dreaming, which I had a couple of times also.

That moment when your brain falls asleep in class and tells you it unveiled the deep connection between carnival blister peanut texture and the quantum variational bound. And then you wake up suddenly and get scared because you think you might have yelled out something stupid.

Or maybe I’m just the only one.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#95

Post by veli_joza »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #74
dosycorp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting. Tech to create a feedback loop to keep you in a particular state. When I was a kid I really had this thing for switching a light switch between off and on. Know what I mean? There's a spot you can hold it between off and on where the light flickers, and buzzes, at low power, sort of randomly. I guess this is like that for wake-sleep. Cool state to be in and to get there without drugs, concen…

Yes. You start by having a dream journal. Before going to sleep, tell yourself with focus and mental expectation you will have dreams that you remember. Prep your mind. Each time you wake up, try to remember anything you might have dreamed jotting it down. This will increase awareness and number of dreams you have. Many also find taking naps during the day increases number of dreams. Most of mine came with them. You'…

I don't think your adaptations were caused by the movie. Fake wake-ups are common when lucid dreaming and some practitioners counter this by training themselves to preform reality checks each time they wake up.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#96

Post by aoner »

kfrzcode wrote: post #23
dosycorp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting. Tech to create a feedback loop to keep you in a particular state. When I was a kid I really had this thing for switching a light switch between off and on. Know what I mean? There's a spot you can hold it between off and on where the light flickers, and buzzes, at low power, sort of randomly. I guess this is like that for wake-sleep. Cool state to be in and to get there without drugs, concen…

If you find yourself semi-lucid within a dream, it's beneficial to immediately try to "anchor" yourself in your surroundings, by slowing turning around in-place, touching yourself, smelling things; activate all of your senses and your grounding to the dream will be much stronger allowing you to stay lucid and control the narrative.

This. I’ve seen colours in my dreams that I’ve never seen before. Senses are so much more vivid in lucid dreams.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#97

Post by nickpsecurity »

veli_joza wrote: post #95
nickpsecurity wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You start by having a dream journal. Before going to sleep, tell yourself with focus and mental expectation you will have dreams that you remember. Prep your mind. Each time you wake up, try to remember anything you might have dreamed jotting it down. This will increase awareness and number of dreams you have. Many also find taking naps during the day increases number of dreams. Most of mine came with them. You'…

I don't think your adaptations were caused by the movie. Fake wake-ups are common when lucid dreaming and some practitioners counter this by training themselves to preform reality checks each time they wake up.

That's true and good advise. I second that for anyone reading. You're never guaranteed to be out just because you seem to wake up. Double true if lying on bed when "awake." ;)

Regarding my case, I rarely had them over many years of lucid dreaming. They were 2-3 layers deep if each wake-up is a layer. After the movie, I had more in next months than I had in years with 3+ layers common with some around 10. I also increased lucidity after a few layers with changes to the dream script that tricked me into thinking I was more awake. The reality checks even failed on some of them. The simulation was that realistic. Except No 1 because I always know when I'm finally awake. I just couldn't apply No 1 in those dreams for some reason. I just eventually got out after massive, prolonged effort with many false positives until I was truly awake where I could apply No 1.

Freaky stuff. I'm not necessarily blaming the movie itself so much as saying it gave my mind an idea that unconscious creativity ruthlessly exploited from there. I can't prove causality but it's quite a huge correlation to be accidental. Fortunately, I managed to reduce the problem a bit using the reverse of learning lucid dreaming. Hit and miss. I haven't had one of those mega-layered dreams in a while.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#98

Post by tauntz » 

  > Ideas were not coming from me, they were just passing through my head
This might sound like I'm crazy but this brings back memories of a strange experience from some years ago that I can't really explain other than "coincidence".. but in the light of this article I started to think.. is it?

Me and my gf were really tired and both exactly in this "almost sleeping but not quite" state. We were lying down with our heads touching (my left temple touching her right temple.. not exactly the temple but just to give a generic idea). We were still talking with each other but at the same time I was seeing random fragments of dreams and the reality was fading away and coming back occasionally. At some point I saw a dream(?) about an orange (I think.. or a ball) that grew bigger and bigger till almost everything was.. filled by it and at that moment my gf says something in the lines of ".. and then there's this huge orange ball coming at me and growing bigger". I woke up immediately and asked her to explain wtf just happened because she was seeing the exact same thing that I was seeing at exactly the same time.

Could it be that one of our brains was picking up the brain waves of the other (..the brains were so close together after all :)) and as our consciousness was fading between being asleep.. it didn't filter out this random interference and interpreted it in the same way, producing the same dream like encounter? Was she, in essence, "reading my mind"? Am I crazy? :)

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#99

Post by sangnoir »

jl2718 wrote: post #94
donttrack wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypnagogia.. Didn't hear that word before. I get that a lot and tried to explain it to other people, but nobody seem to understand what I am talking about. It feels like I am dreaming while I am still awake in some kind of transitional state, where I am not conscious and also not asleep. It is not the same as lucid dreaming, which I had a couple of times also.

That moment when your brain falls asleep in class and tells you it unveiled the deep connection between carnival blister peanut texture and the quantum variational bound. And then you wake up suddenly and get scared because you think you might have yelled out something stupid. Or maybe I’m just the only one.

> Or maybe I’m just the only one

not just you - I didn't have a name for it, but my brain pretty much does free-association in that phase. On more than one occasion I've jolted awake because I've had a earth-shattering revelation, only to realise my idea was already invented (hot air balloon) or pretty ridiculous (like having your toaster burn the day's agenda on your toast).

I can't help but wonder: how many multi-million dollar ideas have I had and then promptly forgot as I got into deeper sleep?

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#100

Post by DavidSJ »

tauntz wrote: post #98

> Ideas were not coming from me, they were just passing through my head This might sound like I'm crazy but this brings back memories of a strange experience from some years ago that I can't really explain other than "coincidence".. but in the light of this article I started to think.. is it? Me and my gf were really tired and both exactly in this "almost sleeping but not quite" state. We were lying down with our hea…

Consider an alternative hypothesis? In your hypnagogic state, your brain actually produced an image based on what she described to you, then reordered the chronology of events so that it seemed to you like you imagined the image before she described it. Not too dissimilar from deja vu.

It's well known that brains can sometimes reorder the chronology of events, especially if they occur within a short time window.

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