We spend a significant amount of time on sleep. What if we could work on tasks during our sleep too? Now, this is becoming a reality.
A neurotechnology company named “Prophetic” is inventing a wearable device that stabilizes lucid dreams. Prophetic’s mission is deeply ambitious with the potential to radically transform human consciousness.
Prophetic named their non-invasive neural device as “Halo” which looks like a headband.
Lucid dreams are a type of dream where the dreamer becomes aware that they are asleep. They are purely phenomenological experiences with little or no external sensory input. It’s like being awake in your sleep. You can control what happens in your lucid dream, and you can even use it to learn new things or overcome fears.
There are a few things you can do to increase your chances of having a lucid dream. You can do reality checks, which is asking yourself if you’re dreaming throughout the day. You can also wake yourself up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep, which is called WBTB (Wake back to bed). And you can repeat a phrase to yourself as you’re falling asleep, which is called MILD (Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams ).
One of the defining characteristics of a lucid dream is the increased activity of frontal brain regions. Regions like the prefrontal cortex are associated with self-awareness and decision making. These regions are less active during regular dreaming, which could explain why we accept bizarre dream scenarios without question. However, when we become lucid, the prefrontal cortex “wakes up,” allowing us to realize that we are dreaming.
A growing body of research has explored the potential of using non-invasive stimulation to artificially create this frontal activity to stabilize lucid dreaming.
Both transcranial direct current stimulation and transcranial alternating current have been around for many decades. Transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation is an emerging non-invasive brain stimulation technique that uses ultrasound waves to modulate neural activity.
In terms of spatial precision, focused ultrasound has many advantages over some other non-invasive neuromodulation techniques like electric stimulation.
Transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation has been shown many times to be safe and beneficial. It has been shown that it can significantly improve working memory. This is important because during a regular dream, working memory is strongly impaired.
The transformer architecture, which is the technology underpinning powerful LLMs like ChatGPT, has established itself as the holy grail of sequential pattern recognition and generative artificial intelligence. Modified versions have been developed to process EEG neural activity and has established itself as the new state-of-the-art of neural decoding.
Prophetic is partnering with the Donders Institute on a study to collect the largest dataset of fMRI imaging data of lucid dreamers. With this data, they are standardizing a dataset of neural activation patterns of lucid dreams and modifying a generative decoder block to output steering controls for the ultrasonic stimulation pulses. This will allow the system to artificially mimic the neural activity observed in naturally occurring lucid dreams.
Given the distinction between regular and lucid dreaming is largely the activation of the frontal brain regions and given the growing body of research into non-invasive neural stimulation techniques, it is becoming increasingly inevitable that scientists will develop a technology capable of reliably stimulating these areas. Such targeted activation would transition a standard dream into a lucid one, ushering in a new era where the boundaries of dream states are more within our conscious control. As technology and neuroscience continue their evolution, dreams will soon become a more tangible and manipulable dimension of human experience.
While the potential for inducing lucid dreams through transcranial ultrasound stimulation is an exciting prospect, it’s necessary that considerations for safety and privacy are at the forefront of this technology’s development and application. From a safety perspective, the technology must undergo rigorous testing to ensure it doesn’t negatively impact brain function or cause any physical harm.
Privacy concerns also come into play with this technology. The ability to modulate dreams could conceivably open the door to manipulative practices,
where dreams are directed for advertising, propaganda, or more nefarious purposes. As such, it is essential to establish robust regulations and safeguards to prevent misuse. This technology should be strictly used to facilitate the lucidity to give dreamers control over their dreams.
Prophetic’s Halo is a tool for humans to explore their subconscious. The Halo is a closed-loop neurostimulation device that combines EEG and transcranial ultrasound stimulation to stabilize lucid dreams.
Using a transformer architecture and other advanced artificial intelligence methods, the Halo is able to use EEG feedback to intelligently spatially generate ultrasonic pulses to mimic naturally occurring neural activation patterns from a training set of fMRI data of lucid dreamers.
Prophetic is working with Afshin Mehin who designed Elon Musk’s Neuralink N1.
News source: Prophetic
