MIT researchers in the United States have developed a machine that can influence our dreams. Thanks to a word or an odor, this tool can decide to integrate certain elements into our night stories, or even prevent us from having nightmares.
This morning, an innovation worthy of the film "Inception". There is now a machine capable of influencing the content of our dreams.
Her name is Dormio. It was created by researchers at MIT's Dream Lab in the United States. It looks like a sort of glove with sensors that identify the different phases of sleep. For example, if it detects that we are having a nightmare, it will trigger the emission of a smell that we associate with something joyful. What will appease us and make us forget. It is a technique used in particular to treat post-traumatic stress.
But can we influence the dream more directly. Choose what we will dream of for example?
Yes. For this, the machine will wait until you enter a strange state, bordering on sleep. Half lucid, half asleep. And it will broadcast you a phrase or a keyword. "Tiger", for example. And they showed that when they woke up, everyone who had experienced it had incorporated a tiger into their dream. This is understandable. It's the same mechanism as when someone shakes you to wake you up. And that, oddly in your dream, there was an earthquake.
And can we control the events of the dream?
It will depend on the people. But they also showed that their machine facilitates the famous "lucid dream". It's like in "Inception": when you are aware of dreaming and you have this incredible ability to control events. But even by remaining passive, if we are forced to dream of a subject, it will boost our ability to memorize it and boost our creativity. Some artists, athletes, students, do it naturally. We are going to be able to be helped by a machine.