A British psychologist carries out a mass participation experiment in order to verify whether a new iPhone app called Dream:On can positively influence human dreams.
The application is developed by a scientific team led by Richard Wiseman, professor at the University of Hertfordshire. It is considered to monitor and record sleep patterns, eventually producing a particular sound when a sleeping person is dreaming.
An iPhone with the Dream:On application installed is positioned next to the bed before the user is going to bed. First of all, the application records the movements of the user and when he or she passes into the REM sleep stage (the stage when most dreams take place), the mobile device plays a soothing piece of music.
The sound is claimed to create a sense of calm and, therefore, positive experiences for the sleeping person. It is said to be able to make you feel as if you are lying on the beach, flying, or walking through the forest.
When the person leaves the REM sleep stage, the application generates an alarm sound so that the user wakes up and describes their dream, which is then added to a “dreamcatcher-database”. Dreams can be instantly shared on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Professor Wiseman and his team expect thousands of entries. So far, the application is free and can be downloaded for iPhone and iPad from the Apple official site. A version for other smartphones will be released later this year.
What do you think about this idea? Would you try this new iPhone app to influence your dreams? As for me, I believe that this app would be useful mainly if someone has a persistent problem with nightmares, so they would seek to influence their dreams.
And I’m not sure if I’d feel comfortable publishing my dreams in some kind of online database. What about you?
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downloading right now to try it out. can't wait to see how well it works. wish there was one for nightmares to be honest. I think having nightmares might help us conquer fears sometimes.