THE PIPE DREAM LUCID DREAMING DEVICE

Imagine a simple device that can safely, reliably induce lucid dreams. As technology improves, we won’t have to merely imagine such a device.

Let’s explore the attributes of an ideal lucid dream induction device — effective, safe, usable, and valuable.

Effective

The device should induce lucid dreams most nights — even for those that don’t practice mental techniques for lucid dreaming (e.g. dream journaling, reality checks, WBTB, MILD).

To achieve this, we must deliver an effective, targeted, well-timed dose of stimulation. The type of stimulation (e.g. tACS, tDCS, TMS, light, sound, vibration, etc.), strength, and frequency must induce meaningful changes to a person’s awareness to reliably jolt them into a lucid dream without waking them. The stimulation should be applied to an effective location, and timed during a specific phase of sleep in which the dreamer is better able to transition into the lucid dreaming state.

Greater knowledge of the lucid dreaming brain should be gained to guide this targeting and timing.

Safe

Any device should do no harm to the user’s brain or significantly disrupt their sleep. Sleep has an enormous impact on our health and emotional wellbeing. Evolution has optimized our sleep physiology over many iterations. Frequent lucid dreams may reduce the restorative effects of natural sleep and dreams. However, using technology to increase lucid dreaming frequency may jumpstart the next evolutionary leap of our sleep experience.

Controlled studies should be conducted to demonstrate safety. This will also eliminate a purchase barrier for many.

Usable

Right out of the box, the average person should be able to easily set up the device with minimal instruction. Device placement should be intuitive and without the use of adhesives or patches. It should be comfortable enough to not disturb normal sleep.

Valuable

The price should seem like a bargain relative to the perceived benefits to the end-user. Beyond inducing lucid dreams, value can be created with other potential features…

Sleep monitoring: Sensors will be required to detect when a person is in REM sleep, so we might as well use these sensors to monitor sleep the entire night, including detection of other sleep stages (Deep, REM, Light, Awake), sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, and other metrics correlated to sleep quality, such as: heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels, respiratory rate, and breathing disturbances.

Dream monitoring: Use the sensor data to automatically decode and record the imagery and events experienced within dreams. This would help automate the dream journaling process. While it may seem like science fiction, researchers are progressing on this functionality.

Improve sleep quality: Ideally, the stimulation will enable functionality to also help the user fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and increase the quality of their restful deep sleep. This functionality is currently being pioneered with acoustics and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with other devices.

Sleep Coaching: Users could receive education on how to improve their sleep quality — helping ensure ample time for lucid dreaming explorations later in the sleep period.

Lucid Dream Coaching: Users could receive education and personalized guidance to help increase lucid dream frequency and duration. This could include a dream journaling feature to boost dream recall, mindfulness exercises to boost metacognition skills, daytime reminders for the user to question if they are in a dream (i.e. reality checks), or to gently wake the user after the first few sleep cycles so they can engage in middle-of-the-night practices (e.g. WBTB, MILD, etc.). It could also include training to better ensure external sensory cues (e.g. sound, light) have the correct associations to induce lucidity.

Community: It should be easy for users to connect with each other to share lucid dreaming tips and experiences. This could include participant-led research studies into topics like mutual dreaming.

All of this functionality won’t happen overnight. But when it’s all within one effective, safe, usable, valuable device — lucid dreaming will go mainstream.

What’s your ideal lucid dream induction device? Let’s discuss your pipe dream device in the comments.

Then, hop over to the Tech for Dreaming Discord server to brainstorm the future of lucid dreaming technology.

Note: This article was adapted from this longer-form article written in Spring 2020.