MIT researchers are developing a device "Dormio" that controls dreams by hypnotism

When a person is sleeping, a shallow sleep "REM sleep", A deep sleep"Non-REM sleep"It is said that people are dreaming at the time of sleeping REM who is only arousing the brain. The research team led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Mr. Adam Horowitz is developing a device "Dormio" that pulls out the image of a dream that people see in the same way as hypnotism just before a person sleeps deeply.

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams to Augment Human Creativity | Fluid Interfaces
http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects/hypnagog

MIT Researchers Have Developed a 'System for Dream Control' - Motherboard
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywxjvg/steel-ball-control-dreams-dormio-mit-hypnagogia

Fame famous for saying "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% sweat"Thomas EdisonThere is a theory that it was acquiring "self hypnotism" sleeping with an iron ball in hand. When relaxing with the iron ball gripping and getting asleep, the iron ball falls from the hand to the floor at the timing when the body has completely weakened, and Edison awakens with a loud noise called a gutton echoing in the room. Edison pulled the dreams he saw just before waking up to consciousness, and he was trying to get "1% inspiration" for squeezing the ideas of inventions and research from there.

byBoston Public Library

Horowitz advocates the hypothesis that "dreams seen just before shifting from semi-arousal state to sleeping state are part of creativity", and the hypnotic device developed to demonstrate it is "Dormio". The following image is a prototype of Dormio.


The concept of Dormio is close to Edison 's self - hypnotism which uses half awake state. The palm part of the glove is equipped with a small pressure sensor and is controlled by Arduino. Wear gloves before going to bed and attach an electroencephalogram sensor to your head. Electric brain wave measurement by the electroencephalograph sensor will start when you grip the hand gently and apply pressure to the sensor and fall asleep.

The relaxation of the muscle is detected by the palm pressure sensor, and as the brain wave gradually approaches the state of sleeping slowly, the robot "Jibo" on the bedside speaks the word programmed beforehand. The brains that are awakening are able to control the dreams they see just before sleeping by catching the words of Jibo.


Horowitz said that six people tested Dormio's prototype. In the test, Jibo continued to talk with one of the phrases "Do not forget to think about rabbits" "Please remember to think about folk" and interfered with the subject's dream. Also, when judging that the subject is sleeping, he seems to have set it to talk that "Mr. ○, you are already asleep".

When the test was over, Horowitz called "a test of creativity" and asked to write something about rabbits and forks. Then, five out of six subjects were able to produce the story full of originality more than when it was not using Dormio. In addition, one of the subjects testified that "I was not feeling the idea, but I felt like I came through my head without permission".

However, the prototype palm pressure sensor was difficult to grasp delicate muscle movements, and it turned out that the whole Dormio would be very expensive if included in the set up to the robot. Therefore, Rovitz improves the sensor to improve accuracy, and Jibo is changing to smartphone application instead of robot. Also, in order not to disturb sleep, we are also developing a new generation of Dormio that works only by reading eyelid movements.


Horowitz says that experiences during sleep on the Dormio test have an impact when awake and live. For example, one of the subjects said that when hearing the word "folk" he tweeted that "the fork is colonialism."

"The subjects are not conscious about the fork usually, but the brain unconsciously thinks about the fork firmly.During the technology of Dormio, the cognition that considers" what are you thinking usually? " It is very exciting to be able to access ", Horowitz says.