Topics: Science, Technology, Sleep, News
Yet another huge scientific breakthrough has been achieved - and this time it involves dreams.
A start-up company in California say that they have proven that lucid dreams can unlock a new type of communication.
Using specially designed equipment, REMspace - a neurotechnology company specializing in sleep enhancement and lucid dreaming - successfully induced two willing participants into lucid dreams, where they managed to exchange a message with one another.
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While we have all heard of lucid dreams, do we actually know what they are?
Well, REMspace defines them as having two attributes, the first being that 'practitioners possess full, conscious awareness during the experience'.
The second is that 'practitioners recognize a genuine separation from the physical body'.
Basically, a person is aware they are dreaming while still actually dreaming.
As to how researchers knew that the two people communicated with one another while lucid dreaming, they tracked the participants brain waves and other polysomnographic data using specially developed apparatus.
When the first person was successfully in a lucid dream state, a server generated a random Remmyo word (the first electromyographical language) and sent it to them through earbuds.
They then repeated the word in their dream.
Eight minutes later, the next person fell into a lucid dream and received the stored message from the first participant.
This was confirmed when she woke up and shared the word she received.
Adding to the amazingness of the results, the two people who exchanged a message weren't even in the same room - in fact, they were in separate houses.
The study was conducted on September 24.
Speaking about the huge breakthrough, Michael Raduga, founder and CEO of REMspace, said: "Yesterday, communicating in dreams seemed like science fiction. Tomorrow, it will be so common we won’t be able to imagine our lives without this technology."
He went on, as per BusinessWire: "This opens the door to countless commercial applications, reshaping how we think about communication and interaction in the dream world. That's why we believe that REM sleep and related phenomena, like lucid dreams, will become the next big industry after AI."
The experiment's success comes after five painstaking years of research and technological development.
Now REMspace has set its sights on enabling real-time communication in lucid dreams.
Reportedly, the company hopes to achieve this goal by 2025.
Watch this space!
