Dream Design: Awakening the Creative Power of Near-Sleep

There's an App for That!

This is me, immersed in a dream about big other-worldly butterflies; an old-growth forest of massive trees surrounds me. (Sorry, the butterflies prompt didn’t make it into this AI image. Meh.)

"On a stormy night in 1816, Mary Shelley had a terrifying dream about a corpse coming to life—a nightmare that inspired her to write Frankenstein. More than a century later, a melody in a dream led Paul McCartney to compose one of The Beatles’s most beloved songs, Yesterday.

Is there something about dreaming that enhances our creativity? Or is it just sleep itself? Scientists say they’re closer to an answer, thanks to an unusual study that used an electronic glove to guide people’s dreams while they slumbered."

‘Dream glove’ boosts creativity during sleep | Science | AAAS

Of all the dreams we ever have--75 years-worth in my case--a few dreams stand out. And from those, a handful will stand on your chest and won't let you breathe. I had one of that variety a couple of weeks ago.

I woke up in a sweat. I felt drained. Betrayed. Hurt. Who were those people? Why had these people treated me that way, and where had they gone? I wanted them to explain themselves to me.

I bet you have wished like me that you could put a bookmark in a dream and pick up where you left off. Could it even be done?

I don’t answer that question in this search, but as chance would have it, an article had been published only a few days before my emotionally-weighty dream that tells how the near-dream state can be entered, influenced, and profited from.

The sleep stage of focus here is called hypnagogia. The device for accessing near-sleep’s creative potential is called Dormio. And therein lies the tale.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

Here is a statement of purpose from the early-ish stages of this research:

"Here, we present a novel protocol using a new wearable electronic device, Dormio, to automatically generate serial auditory dream incubations at sleep onset, wherein targeted information is repeatedly presented during the hypnagogic period, enabling direct incorporation of this information into dream content, a process we call targeted dream incubation (TDI)."

The Dormio Glove—research grade. But you won’t need this to access Targeted Dream Incubation. Read on.

And here's how it works, if you are a participant at the full-equipment clinical or research level. You'll need access to the the Dormio Dream Incubator, which includes a special glove. You can read the details and find additional links here:

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

EVERYNIGHT DREAMS FOR EVERYDAY PEOPLE

But it is worth noting—before you wander off— that this tool is being made accessible to everybody by way of a free app you can access on your computer (or better —for actual use— on your smart phone.) It looks like this:

Go to the Dormio Timer page in your desktop at this link. On your phone via Safari, you can turn this into a Home Screen app.

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To use the tool, first you have to know how long it takes for you to begin to leave conscious wakefulness and enter the early state of sleep. There is an easy way to determine your time-to-near-sleep.

Thomas Edison appreciated the good elves that come just before sleep when he needed to think outside the box. To gain access to them, he would begin his nap with a steel ball in his hand.

When it dropped, it woke him up just as he entered pre-sleep. Often after his nap he would find the creative solution that had evaded him before.

I have long been able to nap just to the point of hypnagogia (pre-sleep) and wake myself up at that moment, refreshed. I have not auto-suggested a "theme" to dream about in the past.

But I have the Dormio Timer now and will give it a workout during the next week. Any excuse to nap is always welcome!

THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT

Making use of the Dormio Timer, the user holds their phone, which drops on a pillow or carpeted floor when they just begin to leave full consciousness and enter pre-sleep.

Having knowledge of that interval is necessary to make use of the tool. I'm guessing I fall asleep in 5 to 7 minutes, but I will establish that with a half-dozen tests and take an average.

So what things or places, ideas or questions would you like to enter your dreams?

You'll record the prompt message including the term or topic that you want to enter into your near-sleep (hynagogia) period. Let's say it's butterflies; or coral reefs; or space lasers.

And if this technique works as expected, you may find that your dreams include those intended topics, and your thinking or writing about them the next day are more vivid or complete--more creative--than they would have been without Dormio's power of suggestion at a near-sleep teachable moment.

NOW I LAY ME

"Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind." - William Golding

Perhaps we will soon see "dream prompts" in an AI-enhanced app that builds on and adds to this new era of participatory dream design.

The technique is being praised as an important inroad into the study of what human minds can do when we give them the right kind of guidance in those golden moments just before sleep.

And maybe with practice and further improvement of the tools, instead of a whirlwind of useless rubbish from the dumpster of sleep, we get sorted stuff that matters from a treasure chest; nuggets gathered, held up to the light of consciousness, and good for the next day's pondering, wondering and thinking.

The good elves will have spun our straw into gold.

“This is a truly seminal scientific contribution,” says Jonathan Schooler, who studies creativity at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but was not involved in the work. “It makes major inroads on a topic that has fascinated humanity for centuries, if not millennia.”

Find most anything you want to know about this research at MIT and elsewhere among the links at the website of Adam Horowitz, who has been involved in this work.

A dream of butterflies. They glow and fade in the dark forest. Apparently butterflies are hard to imagine if your intelligence is artificial.