“Dream incubation” is a way of shaping what we dream about. What began in Tetris is today one of the greatest expectations for a future cure for post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression.
For centuries, humanity has been trying to understand where dreams come from and what their function is. Now some sleep researchers say we may soon not only be able to interpret them, but also moldá-los.
Scientists working in the emerging field of dream engineering They say that by introducing ideas into the mind as we fall asleep, it may be possible to guide what we experience during sleep.
Initial research indicates that this practice can help improve learning, stimulate creativity and even alleviate trauma.
A design-driven dream
Writer and artist Will Dowd of Braintree, Massachusetts, says he feels like he has become an “almost professional dreamer.” Unable to read due to a degenerative condition that affected his vision and mobility, he began experimenting with a technique known as dream incubation. The method consists of exposing the mind to brief audio stimuli at the moment you fall asleep.
“I was wondering if I could program my dreams with literature,” he tells the BBC. Using recordings of poems played as he fell asleep, Dowd reports that his nights began to be filled with vivid images: crossing a mysterious city devastated by a gigantic flood or racing with foxes over moonlit waves.
“I would compare them to dreams of overcoming, which encourage motivation”, he says. The dreams became the basis of a book (yet to be published) and, perhaps more importantly for you, they brought a sense of evasion. “I felt like I had gone to another world and come back.”
The science and history behind dream engineering
“Dream incubation” is not new. Ancient Greek and Thai cultures used temples to seek guidance through dreams. Modern interest in influencing the content of dreams gained momentum in the early 2000s, when Harvard University professor Robert Stickgold found that people who had played the video game Tetris often saw shapes falling as they fell asleep, a phenomenon that became known as Tetris effect.
“We were simply ecstatic. We demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to influence the content of dreams,” says Stickgold.
Today, researchers like Adam Haar Horowitz, a cognitive scientist who works with Harvard University and MIT, are developing technologies capable of guiding dreams in a more deliberate way.
A device he helped create, the I sleepmonitors physiological signals as the person falls asleep and issues a verbal instruction, for example, “remember to dream about water”, at the exact moment they enter a state known as hypnagogic. It is the phase where we experience streams of vivid visual images as we fall asleep.
One study concluded that more than 70% of participants reported dreaming about a specific theme after receiving instructions to dream about it through Dormio.
Haar Horowitz’s interest originates from a personal experience: after a childhood trauma, his mother whispered soothing phrases while he slept, which changed the recurring nightmares he had.
“My dreams started to change, I got over those nightmares and stopped being so afraid,” he says.
The researcher believes that “dream engineering” opens up a completely new scientific frontier. Once it is possible to successfully guide dreams, it becomes feasible to create groups that can be monitored and compared scientifically.
Heal a trauma
For some people, dreams played an unexpected role in how they dealt with grief.
Mare Lucas of California suffered years of nightmares after the death of her teenage son, Zane. But, after undergoing surgery to treat breast cancer, she woke up from anesthesia with a sequence of vivid, affectionate and comforting dreams about her son, which seems to have interrupted the nightmares she had been having.
“I haven’t had a single nightmare in two and a half years,” he says. “This changed my life.”
The experiment reflects a line of research currently being explored by a team at Stanford University. Researcher Pilleriin Sikka says that although anesthesia is not the same as “normal” sleep, many patients report surprisingly positive dreams under anesthesiawhich appear to have significant therapeutic effects when awakening occurs more gradually than usual after surgery.
The hope is that, in the future, this could help people deal with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety and depression.
“Maybe, one day, there will be dream clinics,” he says.
Ethics
As scientific interest in “dream engineering” has grown, debate over its ethical use has also increased.
In 2021, the US beer brand Coors produced an ad based on “dream incubation”, encouraging people to fall asleep after seeing surreal images with mountain valleys, waterfalls and a talking fish in a top hat holding a can of beer. In practice, the brand encouraged the public to watch the video before going to sleep, which, according to the company, would encourage dreams about the product.
The campaign generated reactions from some scientists in the field, including Robert Stickgold and Adam Haar Horowitz, who signed an open letter criticizing the use of the technique for advertising purposes.
“The advertising industry should leave our sleep alone”says Stickgold. “It’s our last stronghold of privacy.”
Other experts, such as Harvard dream researcher Deirdre Barrett, consider these fears exaggerated and say that the influence on dreams remains subtle when compared to conventional advertising.
Barrett, who consulted with Coors during the ad’s conception, says the project was an opportunity to introduce the idea of “dream incubation” to a new audience.
Dream? For what?
For Haar Horowitz, “dream engineering” is not just about science or technology, but about reclaiming a significant part of our lives.
“A third of every day adds up to a third of a year, which adds up to a third of a life“, he states. “Dreams are a space in which you can do more, think more, build more. So I see this as a way of saying, ‘I’m no longer going to lose a third of my psychological experience.’”
As the investigation progresses, the dream world is no longer just a passive frontier of the mind. It has become a field of contention between those who see it as a space that can be actively explored and used to support mental health, and those who see it as yet another platform to sell products.
