7 ms·

To sleep, perchance to control your dreams

56 points by djug 12y ago

3stripe 12y ago
"Voss does not foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming machines." Yet...
- dmoo 12y ago
  Google is probably working on putting ads in them already
- guiambros 12y ago
  "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"
PeterWhittaker 12y ago
tl;dr: Lucid dreaming is accompanied by increase in gamma waves in the brain. Inducing gamma waves can induce lucid dreaming. Applications are theoretical, but may include therapy for stress disorders, e.g.
fsiefken 12y ago
Perhaps the shakti design, a God helmet, could be used for this purpose? http://www.shaktitechnology.com/shiva/god%20helmet/index.htm http://www.shaktitechnology.com/shiva/god%20helmet/index.htm
Aurel1us 12y ago
Does anyone have additional links for that field of research? Favored without charge PDFs.
veb 12y ago
I don't know about this. I know I can have rather nasty nightmares, but I don't remember them when I wake up. That's a good thing. If I was lucid dreaming, bad things would probably still happen. Does anyone have any experience with lucid dreaming? It sounds like it would be exhausting.
- swah 12y ago
  Like you, I suck at remembering my dreams, which is a big problem for those wanting to experience lucid dreaming. http://reddit.com/r/luciddreaming http://reddit.com/r/luciddreaming has lots of information about this. I think lucid dreaming must be very refreshing...
- dogmatix 12y ago
  Exhausting - it can be, you wake up in the dream and eventually get tired and fall asleep again (I once fell asleep in a puddle, in which I proceeded to drown).
- gone35 12y ago
  From my limited experience, once you are aware you are in a nightmare it relieves you somewhat, and then you try to reverse/ward off the 'bad things' in various ways or wake yourself up, depending on how much control/lucidity you got. So it's still stressful but not nearly as much as a full-blown nightmare with no insight whatsoever.
  - jerf 12y ago
    I learned to lucidly dream when I was 8 or 10 or so. I was having a recurring dream where I was being chased by a Big Bad Thing, something crocodile-esque that wanted to eat me. Of course I ran away, but in general you can't deliberately run away from something in a dream; the act of remembering that you are running away from an X itself keeps X around. I finally was able to "carry in" the knowledge that this must be my recurring dream, so after running away for a bit, I turned around and jumped in the crocodile's mouth. I swear, a subconscious can be surprised at your dream actions. Perhaps someday we'll understand the neuroscience enough to explain that. But I'd swear there was a two to three second massive huh? what now? from my subconscious. Once again, I was faced with the crocodile, almost by some sort of default, and once again, I jumped in. After that, the dream just moved on. I haven't had many nightmares since. Non-zero, but the incidence rate went way down. If one is having troubles with "simple" nightmares, which is to say, bad dreams that are just bad for no apparent reason, as opposed to bad dreams which represent real traumas or real problems, lucid dreaming is certainly one good solution. Based on my personal experience I'd be a great deal less sanguine about lucid dreaming being able to deal with personal traumas... dreams are not logical, and if you're having a nightmare based on real things the "dream" may metaphorically laugh off your attempts to change it (i.e., if you lost your buddy because you had forgotten to pack more bullets in a war situation, you can dream that you brought more but the "enemy" may well just soak them up and keep coming), but I guess it can't hurt to try... based on reading around and even in comments on this thread, I've observed it's even more difficult than usual to generalize from personal experience to general "rules" of dreaming because it's probably pretty different for us all.
domness 12y ago
I wonder how effective this method compares to that of using something like binaural beats.
DonGateley 12y ago
It says 27 subjects experienced induced lucid dreaming. How many didn't? If the rate is anywhere near 100% and the experimental setup description can be obtained there will be DIY boxes galore to do this and soon. Does anybody know where the paper is? This is a rare case where I don't give a damn about a pay wall.
- chestervonwinch 12y ago
  http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.3719.html http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.37...
  - DonGateley 12y ago
    Thank you. $32 and on order.
tshadwell 12y ago
Essentially: electrical stimulation of the brain can cause some to wake up, and some to enter a state between awake and asleep; sounds fairly intuitive. I have had personal experience of lucid dreams, when I was very young I would stare at my bedroom wall until I fell asleep, the concentration must have kept me awake to some degree.
tiler 12y ago
I would pay quite a bit to have lucid dreams every night. The more control I'd have over the dreams the more I'd pay. Imagine never really losing consciousness. Would be a whole new world.
- mhitza 12y ago
  I'm with you on this, and that it's why this line from the article seemed odd to me "Voss does not foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming machines.". Maybe just people aren't generally aware of lucid dreaming to know what the market size is.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    She doesn't foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming because she thinks it's dangerous to induce an electrical current in the brain without an overseeing physician, not because she doesn't imagine any demand for it.
- EC1 12y ago
  Imagine you could somehow import data in large volumes into dreams. How crazy would it be if you dream, but in your dream you read an entire novel and retained it all?
bryans 12y ago
I'm able to lucid dream intentionally, even to the point that I can take a break, wake up to use the bathroom, and then return to the exact same point in the dream. It is a strange experience to be "conscious" inside a dream, and I have certainly had some interesting ones. Contrary to what the article suggests, you can't really control the scenario you are in. It is more like being awake. You take conscious control of yourself and the brain makes the world react accordingly, but the actions of others are still beyond your ability to change. But I also find it to be quite useful in a practical way. I've written some of my best music and developed some of my best business ideas or inventions during lucid dreams. The bonus being that I can remember everything after waking up, so retaining those ideas becomes much easier than it normally is. In fact, if I play or hear a guitar riff while inside a lucid dream, I'm able to pick up the guitar while awake and have retained noticeable "muscle memory" for the chords or progressions or runs, as if I've played them thousands of times.
- kaoD 12y ago
  How do you know you're not just dreaming that you can control your dream?
  - maaku 12y ago
    What does that even mean?
- mmcdan 12y ago
  Is this intentional lucid dreaming a skill you've developed or did it come naturally? I've heard you can increase the probability of having a lucid dream by keeping a dream journal, doing "dream checks" in everyday life, etc... but i've never heard of a surefire way to have them.
  - hosay123 12y ago
    It's pretty cliché, but an abundance of cheese during the day has occasionally resulted in lucid experiences for me, or at least vivid dreams I remain strongly aware of the next day. That aside, the most reliable and intense series of lucid dreams occurred in my teens while experimenting with psylocybin -- unlike the parent comment, sometimes also affecting the dream's setting or the behaviour of people in it. My favourite (and probably the simplest) experience from that period was repeatedly exhaling steam on a frosty day, marvelling at how the steam and everything else I could sense was a figment of my mind, before waking up giggling and in a wonderful mood.
somnabulis 12y ago
The first time I heard about lucid dreaming, I was a freshman in college. This guy was explaining it to me in this salacious manner, which he claimed was easily accessible to him now that he had gotten the hang of it, and I just found myself completely unimpressed by his masturbatory fantasies. Thinking it over, I've never been able to conceive of an obvious benefit to it, other than as a means to avoid bad dreams. But beyond that, why bother? What kind of absurd escapism is this? And then, just to wake up to a piss-poor reality, where I'd rather be asleep? Feh! In the long run, I found that my diet had a strong relationship with the bad dreams I was having, and after I got out of college, and started buying food with my own money, when I purchased the foods I actually felt hungry for, instead of just raiding the refidgerator for whatever my parents had stocked with (or otherwise resorting to fast food), that bad dreams disappeared, and now I rarely have memorable dreams. Sleep is restful and uneventful, when I get enough of it, and I'm thankful for that.
wildpeaks 12y ago
I am reminded of the game Dreamfall[1] where part of the backstory include a company putting on the market a lucid dreaming device, hence would trigger a decline of sales of traditional entertainment systems because why would you buy movies when you can dream anything you want on demand. (Although the game backstory goes further with its machine being able to not only trigger but also shape and even download the contents of the dream, posing copyright and mind-control issues, but that's another thing :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamfall%3A_The_Longest_Journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamfall%3A_The_Longest_Journ...
AliAdams 12y ago
I wonder how rested you would feel in a lucid dream versus a 'normal' one. You'd think accessing the decision making functions of the brain would give you a worse rest overall.
wisienkas 12y ago
Be you inner self and you cant but control your dreams. Because you are you. So in reality you do already control your dreams. you are just not being you then dreaming.

56 points by djug 12y ago

3stripe 12y ago

"Voss does not foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming machines." Yet...

dmoo 12y ago
Google is probably working on putting ads in them already
guiambros 12y ago
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"

PeterWhittaker 12y ago

tl;dr: Lucid dreaming is accompanied by increase in gamma waves in the brain. Inducing gamma waves can induce lucid dreaming. Applications are theoretical, but may include therapy for stress disorders, e.g.

fsiefken 12y ago

Perhaps the shakti design, a God helmet, could be used for this purpose? http://www.shaktitechnology.com/shiva/god%20helmet/index.htm http://www.shaktitechnology.com/shiva/god%20helmet/index.htm

Aurel1us 12y ago

Does anyone have additional links for that field of research? Favored without charge PDFs.

veb 12y ago

I don't know about this. I know I can have rather nasty nightmares, but I don't remember them when I wake up. That's a good thing. If I was lucid dreaming, bad things would probably still happen. Does anyone have any experience with lucid dreaming? It sounds like it would be exhausting.

swah 12y ago
Like you, I suck at remembering my dreams, which is a big problem for those wanting to experience lucid dreaming. http://reddit.com/r/luciddreaming http://reddit.com/r/luciddreaming has lots of information about this. I think lucid dreaming must be very refreshing...
dogmatix 12y ago
Exhausting - it can be, you wake up in the dream and eventually get tired and fall asleep again (I once fell asleep in a puddle, in which I proceeded to drown).
gone35 12y ago
From my limited experience, once you are aware you are in a nightmare it relieves you somewhat, and then you try to reverse/ward off the 'bad things' in various ways or wake yourself up, depending on how much control/lucidity you got. So it's still stressful but not nearly as much as a full-blown nightmare with no insight whatsoever.
- jerf 12y ago
  I learned to lucidly dream when I was 8 or 10 or so. I was having a recurring dream where I was being chased by a Big Bad Thing, something crocodile-esque that wanted to eat me. Of course I ran away, but in general you can't deliberately run away from something in a dream; the act of remembering that you are running away from an X itself keeps X around. I finally was able to "carry in" the knowledge that this must be my recurring dream, so after running away for a bit, I turned around and jumped in the crocodile's mouth. I swear, a subconscious can be surprised at your dream actions. Perhaps someday we'll understand the neuroscience enough to explain that. But I'd swear there was a two to three second massive huh? what now? from my subconscious. Once again, I was faced with the crocodile, almost by some sort of default, and once again, I jumped in. After that, the dream just moved on. I haven't had many nightmares since. Non-zero, but the incidence rate went way down. If one is having troubles with "simple" nightmares, which is to say, bad dreams that are just bad for no apparent reason, as opposed to bad dreams which represent real traumas or real problems, lucid dreaming is certainly one good solution. Based on my personal experience I'd be a great deal less sanguine about lucid dreaming being able to deal with personal traumas... dreams are not logical, and if you're having a nightmare based on real things the "dream" may metaphorically laugh off your attempts to change it (i.e., if you lost your buddy because you had forgotten to pack more bullets in a war situation, you can dream that you brought more but the "enemy" may well just soak them up and keep coming), but I guess it can't hurt to try... based on reading around and even in comments on this thread, I've observed it's even more difficult than usual to generalize from personal experience to general "rules" of dreaming because it's probably pretty different for us all.

domness 12y ago

I wonder how effective this method compares to that of using something like binaural beats.

DonGateley 12y ago

It says 27 subjects experienced induced lucid dreaming. How many didn't? If the rate is anywhere near 100% and the experimental setup description can be obtained there will be DIY boxes galore to do this and soon. Does anybody know where the paper is? This is a rare case where I don't give a damn about a pay wall.

chestervonwinch 12y ago
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.3719.html http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.37...
- DonGateley 12y ago
  Thank you. $32 and on order.

tshadwell 12y ago

Essentially: electrical stimulation of the brain can cause some to wake up, and some to enter a state between awake and asleep; sounds fairly intuitive. I have had personal experience of lucid dreams, when I was very young I would stare at my bedroom wall until I fell asleep, the concentration must have kept me awake to some degree.

tiler 12y ago

I would pay quite a bit to have lucid dreams every night. The more control I'd have over the dreams the more I'd pay. Imagine never really losing consciousness. Would be a whole new world.

mhitza 12y ago
I'm with you on this, and that it's why this line from the article seemed odd to me "Voss does not foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming machines.". Maybe just people aren't generally aware of lucid dreaming to know what the market size is.
- aetherson 12y ago
  She doesn't foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming because she thinks it's dangerous to induce an electrical current in the brain without an overseeing physician, not because she doesn't imagine any demand for it.
EC1 12y ago
Imagine you could somehow import data in large volumes into dreams. How crazy would it be if you dream, but in your dream you read an entire novel and retained it all?

bryans 12y ago

I'm able to lucid dream intentionally, even to the point that I can take a break, wake up to use the bathroom, and then return to the exact same point in the dream. It is a strange experience to be "conscious" inside a dream, and I have certainly had some interesting ones. Contrary to what the article suggests, you can't really control the scenario you are in. It is more like being awake. You take conscious control of yourself and the brain makes the world react accordingly, but the actions of others are still beyond your ability to change. But I also find it to be quite useful in a practical way. I've written some of my best music and developed some of my best business ideas or inventions during lucid dreams. The bonus being that I can remember everything after waking up, so retaining those ideas becomes much easier than it normally is. In fact, if I play or hear a guitar riff while inside a lucid dream, I'm able to pick up the guitar while awake and have retained noticeable "muscle memory" for the chords or progressions or runs, as if I've played them thousands of times.

kaoD 12y ago
How do you know you're not just dreaming that you can control your dream?
- maaku 12y ago
  What does that even mean?
mmcdan 12y ago
Is this intentional lucid dreaming a skill you've developed or did it come naturally? I've heard you can increase the probability of having a lucid dream by keeping a dream journal, doing "dream checks" in everyday life, etc... but i've never heard of a surefire way to have them.
- hosay123 12y ago
  It's pretty cliché, but an abundance of cheese during the day has occasionally resulted in lucid experiences for me, or at least vivid dreams I remain strongly aware of the next day. That aside, the most reliable and intense series of lucid dreams occurred in my teens while experimenting with psylocybin -- unlike the parent comment, sometimes also affecting the dream's setting or the behaviour of people in it. My favourite (and probably the simplest) experience from that period was repeatedly exhaling steam on a frosty day, marvelling at how the steam and everything else I could sense was a figment of my mind, before waking up giggling and in a wonderful mood.

somnabulis 12y ago

The first time I heard about lucid dreaming, I was a freshman in college. This guy was explaining it to me in this salacious manner, which he claimed was easily accessible to him now that he had gotten the hang of it, and I just found myself completely unimpressed by his masturbatory fantasies. Thinking it over, I've never been able to conceive of an obvious benefit to it, other than as a means to avoid bad dreams. But beyond that, why bother? What kind of absurd escapism is this? And then, just to wake up to a piss-poor reality, where I'd rather be asleep? Feh! In the long run, I found that my diet had a strong relationship with the bad dreams I was having, and after I got out of college, and started buying food with my own money, when I purchased the foods I actually felt hungry for, instead of just raiding the refidgerator for whatever my parents had stocked with (or otherwise resorting to fast food), that bad dreams disappeared, and now I rarely have memorable dreams. Sleep is restful and uneventful, when I get enough of it, and I'm thankful for that.

wildpeaks 12y ago

I am reminded of the game Dreamfall[1] where part of the backstory include a company putting on the market a lucid dreaming device, hence would trigger a decline of sales of traditional entertainment systems because why would you buy movies when you can dream anything you want on demand. (Although the game backstory goes further with its machine being able to not only trigger but also shape and even download the contents of the dream, posing copyright and mind-control issues, but that's another thing :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamfall%3A_The_Longest_Journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamfall%3A_The_Longest_Journ...

AliAdams 12y ago

I wonder how rested you would feel in a lucid dream versus a 'normal' one. You'd think accessing the decision making functions of the brain would give you a worse rest overall.

wisienkas 12y ago

Be you inner self and you cant but control your dreams. Because you are you. So in reality you do already control your dreams. you are just not being you then dreaming.