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The new science of controlling lucid dreams

“Engineering” sleeping consciousness could reduce nightmares, treat insomnia—and even be induce specific dreams just for fun

As we did for Matzek, we wake up participants in the early morning and pursue a 20-minute training: while they lie in bed with their eyes closed, a recorded voice instructs them to remain self-aware and to pay attention to their ongoing sensory experiences. Achilleas Pavlou and Alejandra Montemayor Garcia of the University of Nicosia Medical School in Cyprus are developing wearable devices programmed with machine-learning algorithms to detect when nightmares are occurring based on bio-­signals such as brain activity, breathing and heart rate. My team, along with collaborators at the Donders Institute in the Netherlands and the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy, is testing a simple EEG headband that can detect REM sleep and deliver the kinds of sensory cues I mentioned earlier to induce lucid dreams.

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