Daily Star Researchers at MIT have been testing a fascinating new technique called targeted dream incubation, which allows them to insert certain topics into someone else’s dreams
Past studies have shown that when sleepers enter a rare dream state known as lucid dreaming, they gain awareness that they’re dreaming and can thus have some control over what happens in their mind.
TDI achieves a similar result by targeting people during hypnagogia, a semi-lucid dream state that occurs as someone is falling asleep.
At this moment scientists introduced “targeted information” to the subjects of a study, the results of which were published in the August issue of the journal Consciousness and Cognition.
The study involved 25 participants taking daytime naps. Before going to bed they would record audio prompts in an app such as “remember to think of a tree” and “remember to observe your thoughts”.
They wore hand-mounted Dormio sleep trackers to monitor their heart rate and detect when they entered hypnagogia, at which point they were most “open to influence from outside audio cues”, said lead study author Adam Haar Horowitz.
