Communication with a lucid dreamer from/to wake world

Hi DreamViews,

I'd like to tell you a bit about my PhD/dissertation project which started a few weeks ago. It deals with developing a method to exchange arbitrary messages with a lucid dreamer from the wake world. For this, I use lucid dreaming, dream incorporations (e.g. light flashes or acoustic stimuli), body signals (e.g. eye movements), and a message coding scheme (e.g. Morse code) to transfer arbitrary messages (and not only simple pre-defined signals like LRLR).

There has been quite some research on this already, but to my knowledge not on both bi-directional (wake world->dream world->wake world) and arbitrary (not pre-defined) messages. In the end, I hope to make possible things like learning of new knowledge during sleep, controlling a machine from sleep (e.g. a quadrocopter) etc.
I worked on this in my Master's thesis already, in which I transferred simple random math problems (e.g. "4+4" or "5-2") to the dream and let the dreamer answer them using eye movements + Morse code. This worked at least once, so I now try to improve its reliability and messaging "power". :)

You are all warmly invited to ...
... visit my PhD project website (www.sleepcommunication.com)
... participate in my experiments from your home
... comment on this and share your own experiences+knowledge! :)

One more thing: I am looking for skilled lucid dreamers to conduct sleep communication in our sleep laboratory at University Osnabrück, Germany. If you are from Europe (or even Germany) and want ot participate, please contact me! :)

Hallo Kristoffer,

Willkommen bei DreamViews! I had a look at your PhD project website. Elite. What type of sensors / hardware do you have access to in the lab?

Help yourself to the software that I developed for this very purpose: hackaday.com/2012/06/20/communicating-from-inside-your-dreams. I can type just by blinking in Morse Code patterns.

I had it working with an accelerometer (motion detector) that I designed a long time ago, but that is difficult to practice while awake because any movement mashes the keyboard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiarEOZbkHU

And I managed to get it working with a popular EEG device, NeuroSky's MindWave, just last month. It works much better and can be operated from a less meditative state:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2HyICbBrTg

I might be passing through the Hochsauerland later this year, about two hours south of the university... but I doubt that I would be able to perform under laboratory conditions, I have not been able to reproduce it consistently enough to get a clean recording from the dream state. Hence all the hacking.

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Originally Posted by IAmCoder

Hallo Kristoffer,

Willkommen bei DreamViews! I had a look at your PhD project website. Elite. What type of sensors / hardware do you have access to in the lab?

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Thank you! I currently record with a 10-20-system EEG, a horizontal and vertical EOG (eye movements) and an EMG (muscle tonus), plus a Zeo (1-channel EEG in which you can also see eye artifacts which are strong enough to detect patterns like morse codes from it). I might be using a data glove measuring even finest hand movements (don't know whether it works, have to try out) in future, but I am not sure. Apart from this dream world->wake world signaling, I mainly use visual signals and sounds + e.g. morse code for messaging wake world->dream world at the moment.

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Originally Posted by IAmCoder

Help yourself to the software that I developed for this very purpose: hackaday.com/2012/06/20/communicating-from-inside-your-dreams. I can type just by blinking in Morse Code patterns.

I had it working with an accelerometer (motion detector) that I designed a long time ago, but that is difficult to practice while awake because any movement mashes the keyboard:

And I managed to get it working with a popular EEG device, NeuroSky's MindWave, just last month. It works much better and can be operated from a less meditative state:

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Thank you for your software. I have programmed a very similar application, but with the Zeo as a hardware device. It is also able to translate eye movements into letters using morse code. Actually, I have already controlled a quadrocopter (50 cm long toy airplane) with the Zeo using eye movements and, additionally, teeth muscle artifacts, but only from wake state. In theory, it should not be a problem to control the quadrocopter also from within a lucid dream, if one transports the current position and heading direction to the dream (using sleep communication) and uses eye movements to control it. Would be "controlling a real world (toy) airplane from sleep". Quite cool^^
A question: What do you mean with "accelerometer"? What kind of acceleration do you measure? Do you mean the acceleration of the eyes, the change of the electric field due to eye movements?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IAmCoder

I might be passing through the Hochsauerland later this year, about two hours south of the university... but I doubt that I would be able to perform under laboratory conditions, I have not been able to reproduce it consistently enough to get a clean recording from the dream state. Hence all the hacking.

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You are welcome to visit our lab if you want, even if it is just for a chat, an exchange of ideas! Feel free to contact me!

I would use magnetic signaling or something else that reliably affects brainwave patterns in a certain way to communicate to and maybe a finger-morse code to communicate back. What i really want to see is a machine that changes brainwaves and that you can control from dreams. Do you know of the god helmet? Well, just saying you can easily train a person to recognize a state induced by the god-helmet. It is just a matter of doing the same while asleep. I would actually love to participate in the experiment, germany is so close, but i should work on actually sleeping enough beforehand, my record is not great.

Very cool. I suspect that the lag in the messaging protocol will be too great to control something as fast as a helicopter in real-time from sleep. A simple questionnaire, with questions like "Day or night in your dream?" where you can answer with a dot for day and dash for night might be an easier start...

I use an accelerometer with a resolution of 3660µg and a measurement range of ±5g (49 m/s2). It is sensitive enough to pick up the heartbeat when you are still, and picks up movements around the eyes. But I also have an OpenEEG device that can measure the change of the electric field due to eye movements.

I had started a plugin for the Zeo, but didn't get enough testing done because I don't have one. What language did you write your application in? Mine is in C# - I think I used the ZeoScope as a base. Can you run a quick test to see if the plugin works - I only have one screenshot of it working and I don't know how accurate is?

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Originally Posted by Dthoughts

I would use magnetic signaling or something else that reliably affects brainwave patterns in a certain way to communicate to and maybe a finger-morse code to communicate back. What i really want to see is a machine that changes brainwaves and that you can control from dreams. Do you know of the god helmet? Well, just saying you can easily train a person to recognize a state induced by the god-helmet. It is just a matter of doing the same while asleep. I would actually love to participate in the experiment, germany is so close, but i should work on actually sleeping enough beforehand, my record is not great.

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As far as I know, there has been some TMS/tDCS research (~applying an electric current directly on the brain) combined with lucid dreaming last year or so, but the results were not very strong. I might conduct some reseach like this in future, too, but this is quite complex and of course you need special hardware for it. But it is definitely a nice idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IAmCoder

Very cool. I suspect that the lag in the messaging protocol will be too great to control something as fast as a helicopter in real-time from sleep. A simple questionnaire, with questions like "Day or night in your dream?" where you can answer with a dot for day and dash for night might be an easier start...

I use an accelerometer with a resolution of 3660µg and a measurement range of ±5g (49 m/s2). It is sensitive enough to pick up the heartbeat when you are still, and picks up movements around the eyes. But I also have an OpenEEG device that can measure the change of the electric field due to eye movements.

I had started a plugin for the Zeo, but didn't get enough testing done because I don't have one. What language did you write your application in? Mine is in C# - I think I used the ZeoScope as a base. Can you run a quick test to see if the plugin works - I only have one screenshot of it working and I don't know how accurate is?

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Well actually I already controlled a quadcopter using eye movements and muscle artifacts. If you have a sufficiently good auto-pilot which holds the quadcopter in position whilst there is no command given, you can just concentrate on giving commands like "start", "fly forward", "backward", "left", "right", "higher", "lower", "land", "turn left" and "turn right". Of course it is very simplistic, but hey, it is a start and might work. :)

Ok so with your accelerometer you really measure the acceleration/movement of the skin due to heart beat underneath it then? Or do I misunderstand this? That sounds very interesting! And applied to the eyes: Can you also figure out the gaze direction through closed eyes, or "only" the movement itself? In which directions can you measure the movement?

I am currently working on the third version of my software called Sleeator - it is fully written in Python. But this version will be extremely modular, so my plan is that any module (e.g. for eye movement detection, REM detection, stimulus generation, data visualization etc.) can be programmed in any language. It is then just started as a *.exe and then communicates with the other modules/the Sleeator using sockets.
I am not very familiar with C#, I don't even think I have a compiler for it. But just send me the code or (if you have) an executable file, I will see what I can do!

Always very, very happy when I come across such threads!!
All the best guys!
Attachment 6585

I haven't had a chance to fly a quadcopter, so I guess if it holds itself in position, then the lag wouldn't matter.

The accelerometer really picks up the heartbeat when wrapped inside a headband. I recorded a session with it in parallel to a normal heart rate sensor clipped to my finger. Here is a 60 second printout while I was asleep - the light blue Halograph FM channel is the accelerometer, the red IOM Heart channel is the normal heart rate sensor:
http://lucid-code.com/LucidScribe/Da...eats/01/28.png

Although it measures the acceleration in all directions - X, Y and Z; I don't believe I can figure out the gaze direction... only the intensity of the eye movements.

The source for the live Morse Code translation from the second video is here: https://github.com/lucidcode/LucidSc...andler.cs#L552. You can download the Zeo plugin from the Lucid Scribe page - let me know how that goes.

This is awesome to see people working on this! I am about to run a study this summer that investigates the cognitive aspects of a lucid dream, and because of the lack of communication 'between states' I am forced to rely on subjects' waking interpretations of their lucid dreams. It will work, but won't be as precise as science often demands...
I am no computer whiz, but it is inspirational to see that there are some computer whizzes out there working on this aspect of lucid dreaming. After reading Ursula Voss's new publication about gamma stimulation and then seeing this, it really highlights the idea that before we can do any real investigations into the lucid dreaming brain, we have to be able to access it regularly (Voss) and hear directly from it (you guys).

Thanks a ton for your work, and please keep it up!

I am also curious, it looks like a lot of this work may be preliminary...am I wrong? Have either of you communicated successfully across states with these programs/devices? If so, to what extent?

Thanks again.

Sure. I was just writing code that monitors the live threads on this forum when this one bubbled to the top. Thanks for thanking - always nice to see the code talking back!

Check this thread that is exploring the findings in said publication. Let us hope it keeps spinning! Here is a fresh printout that one of my users posted last week - shows the effect of the gamma stimulation on the EEG reading. It was recorded while awake, but the process to power it on has since then been automated to trigger it while asleep and dreaming:

http://i.imgur.com/ymRWqpq.jpg

Only the letter "S" for me so far, but it was indistinguishable from noise on the printout so I have to keep practicing!