In 2021, we pulled together a Dream x Engineering online seminar series. The focus of the series was ‘how-to’ conduct dream engineering studies, looking at all the weird and unexpected findings from behind-the-scenes: the blurred boundaries between sleep stages and dream recall, what sorts of sensory stimulation and laboratory techniques impact dreaming, and so on.
We selected 7 broad dream engineering topics, and rather than traditional presentations we invited 3-4 panelists each session to give brief 5-minute viewpoints on some of their work related to the topic, then the rest of the session was open for discussion. These sessions generated a lot of conversation among dream engineers, and shed light on the current state of mind of researchers in the field and where we seem to be headed. The next few slides overview the topics and speakers of the series.
Sometimes the study of dreaming might actually inform our understanding of sleep beyond what we can see with purely physiological recording. We explored what are some of the varieties of subjective experiences that can occur during and across sleep states? Can these different dreaming phenomena expand our traditional understanding of sleep stages? Can we predict when dreams are occurring based on sleep physiology? And how can dreams be sampled or measured from different sleep states?
So in this first session we explored some of the varieties of subjective experiences that can occur across sleep stages. We talked about dream-less sleep, a type of experience thought to occur in deep sleep, where one has conscious awareness but without any dream experience occurring. We also discussed neural correlates of dream recall, and microdreams from stage 1 sleep, and how frequently sensory information gets incorporated into these super brief sleep onset images.
In this session we asked speakers: What methods have been used for interfacing with a sleeping/dreaming person. What has surprised you in your work, have you tried stimulation methods that failed or were difficult to implement? What feels like the most promising/important avenue for sensory stimulation of sleep and dreams?
Our second session explored methods used for stimulating dreams, such as brain stimulation over the motor cortex designed to influence body movement in dreams, scent stimulation designed to influence memory. Then a couple talks about current work in lucid dream induction, and actually methods of communicating with lucid dreamers as they’re asleep.
How do aspects of the lab environment impact sleep experience? How can we better control for these factors, or measure them? How do unexpected (subjective) factors show up in sleep disorders and/or treatments. Do these reveal anything about dream generation, or be targets of dream engineering?
In this session, we looked at how one’s experience of being in an experiment or in the lab might influence dreams in unexpected ways, and also how subjective experience shows up in sleep disorders or can be targeted in treatments.
We discussed dreams in bereavement or dream sharing as an exercise to build empathy, and also explored cultural and historical perspectives on dream sharing and incubation.
In approaches for dream recording, we explored whether we can we record aspects of dreams through the body or brain.
We examined whether dream body movement can be revealed through muscular twitches or emotion through facial expressions, or potentially eye signals communicated by lucid dreamers; we also touched on more advanced brain signal decoding - can we reconstruct visual imagery from visual cortex.
Potential uses and misuses of dream engineering: What are some of the promising avenues of dream engineering? What are potential harmful applications? What measures should we have in place when conducting dream engineering research? And what areas of study are important to inform safe dream engineering practices?
In this session we looked at sleep health disparities in minority populations, nocebo effects associated with the ‘sleep health’ movement, risks of lucid dream induction for psychopathology, and misuses of dream engineering.