Some Foods Help You Sleep And Some Disturb Your Sleep

An expert on nutrition and sleep discusses research on the worst offenders in bringing on a bad night’s sleep—and a couple of unexpected sleep aids. Some Foods Help You Sleep And Some Disturb Your Sleep (#GotBitcoin?)

Most people know that caffeine close to bedtime can interfere with sleep and that tossing back cocktails in the evening can cause a person to wake up a few hours later when the alcohol is metabolized. But less research has been done to understand the effects of food on sleep. One expert, Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York—and director of the university’s Sleep Center of Excellence—explains the sleep-diet relationship and what foods may disturb your slumber.

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Emerging Sleep Technologies

Electrical Brain Stimulation:
Walker has developed a device applying precisely timed electrical pulses to enhance slow-wave sleep and memory consolidation during sleep. Challenges remain for home use implementation.


Vibration And Motion:
Research by Sophie Schwartz found gentle rocking motions increased sleep depth by stimulating the vestibular system. Walker sees potential in vibrating mattresses or combining motion with sound.


Acoustic Techniques:
Synchronizing tones to brain waves can enhance sleep, but care must be taken to avoid overstimulation risks. Tailored, adaptive approaches may be ideal.

Poor Diet, Poor Sleep, Poor Diet: A Cycle

Dr. St-Onge says data from large studies observing human behaviors and their relation to health have shown that people who say they suffer from poor sleep quality tend to also report a relatively poor diet. From clinical studies, “we know short sleep can result in increases in food intake,” says Dr. St-Onge, who is also a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. But, she says, even large studies can’t determine which comes first: the poor diet or the poor food choices.

Her own research has shown that how much and how well a person sleeps at night influences eating choices the next day. “If you don’t get enough good sleep or you’re sleep-deprived, you’ll eat more, and that food will be higher in fat or carbohydrates, and it will probably be a higher caloric intake than if you’re well-rested,” she says.

On the flip side, Dr. St-Onge and her colleagues have looked at how food affects sleep. They gave a group of 26 healthy adults a controlled, healthy diet based on FDA guidelines for four days and measured their sleep in the lab.

On another day, they let the participants choose their own food, then measured their sleep. “They ate 33% more saturated fat and about 500 more calories when they self-selected their own food,” she says. On the day participants chose their own meals, they needed almost twice as long to fall asleep at night as when they were given the controlled diet.

The worst offenders in causing a bad night’s sleep were fat and sugar, Dr. St-Onge says. A diet higher in sugar than the daily recommendation brings on more micro-awakenings—changes to a lighter stage of sleep—at night, she says, while more saturated fat results in less slow-wave, or deep restorative sleep, that helps with memory consolidation.

Eat Your Kiwis

Some unexpected foods may act as sleep aids. One study showed that eating kiwifruit, which is high in the mood-moderating hormone serotonin, can help people fall asleep and stay asleep longer. The same goes for tart cherry juice, which is high in the sleep-wake-cycle regulating hormone melatonin.

A higher intake of fiber—fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains—also has been shown to keep a person in slow-wave sleep for longer than usual, Dr. St-Onge says. But she’s not yet certain if eating any of these foods at a particular time of day has more impact. “I would assume it would be time-sensitive but this hasn’t been well-studied,” she says.

Skip the Energy Drink

People who feel sleepy during the day often turn to fatty food or a sugary drink to perk up, she notes. Some people have reported that spicy and salty foods keep them up at night, but Dr. St-Onge says she hasn’t seen research on this.

Staying hydrated throughout the day, rather than gulping a lot of water right before bed, can help with restful sleep by diluting sugars, spices and salts—and preventing trips to the bathroom. Dr. St-Onge herself stops eating a few hours before bedtime. “People can experiment with what their time sensitivity is when it comes to eating, but it’s good for food to be digested before you go to bed,” she says.

Sticking to a fairly regular diet that’s high in fiber and low in saturated fats and simple sugars could contribute to sleep quality, and is associated with better overall health, Dr. St-Onge says. People who don’t sleep well, she notes, have lower attention spans, more memory lapses, worse cognitive and athletic performance and a higher risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension.

“Sleep is critical to every organ, and what we eat impacts every system in the body,” Dr. St-Onge says. Some Foods Help You, Some Foods Help You, Some Foods Help You

Updated: 6-28-2022

Sleep Patches Are The Hotel Amenity We’ve All Been Waiting For

They’re rolling out at Peninsula Hotels worldwide. But do they work?

The very fundamentals of hospitality are to provide “a good night’s sleep and some good food to go with it,” says Gareth Roberts, Peninsula Hotels group director of brand.

Guaranteeing good sleep, especially amid the ultrastressful environs of today’s travel climate, is no small feat. Even before factoring jet lag in, recent findings from the Sleep Foundation show that up to 48% of American adults suffer from some form of insomnia.

Difficulty sleeping has plagued me since my teenage years and has intensified since I became a parent three years ago. Yet I’d never heard of sleep patches, the latest amenity to roll out across the Peninsula Hotels portfolio as part of the brand’s wellness overhaul.

Check into an Eiffel Tower-facing suite at the Peninsula Paris or the old Hollywood digs of the Peninsula Beverly Hills and you’ll find a whole slate of new amenities that range from wellness concierges to in-room fitness gear. But the one that most caught my attention comes with turndown service, placed in an envelope on your pillow.

Subtle Energies Blissful Inhalation Sleep Patches come wrapped in a pretty, white-and-gold packet that’s roughly the size of a wet nap; inside, the patch is just smaller than a dime or a lithium battery.

Simple instructions tell you to peel off an adhesive layer and place the patch on your wrist or collar. It sticks with little effort and doesn’t leave a residue.

Soon, you’re inhaling a fragrant, supposedly calming blend of aromatherapy oils that last for hours. I picked up primary notes of jasmine, plus hints of lavender, citrus, and wood. I wasn’t far off: The actual notes are mogra, a type of jasmine, plus lavender and kewda flowers, which are said to promote relaxation.

The smells seemed to come and go in waves, catching my attention periodically, reminding me of luxurious hotel lobbies throughout India (all happy places!) and encouraging deep, restful breaths.

The amenity isn’t for everyone, though: My aroma-sensitive husband dismissed it as “spa smell” and felt thankful that he couldn’t detect any of the fragrance from a few feet away. And while I liked it, it didn’t make me sleepy, per se.

Medical professionals agree that some essential oils, including lavender, have a good track record of easing anxiety; but by and large, they’re unstudied and unproven. Those with chronic sleep difficulties, like me, will generally need something stronger to induce it.

Peninsula isn’t blind to this. Sleep gummies that contain melatonin are currently being tested for its New York location, for instance, and spa treatments that prepare the body for rest are available in Chicago.

Sleep programming is a growing priority for Peninsula, says Roberts; a wider range of amenities is rolling out on a property-by-property basis in accordance with local law and culture.

“When you’re looking to roll out an amenity globally, there are all sorts of local restrictions in various markets that you have to consider,” Roberts says, explaining the need for a naturopathic product. “We had to be really careful if we wanted to ensure consistency across the entire brand.”

Peninsula has also struck a partnership with meditation app Breethe, which includes bedtime modules that are free for guests to access online.

The sleep patches act as a sort of gateway drug for the brand’s many wellness initiatives; the turndown card that contains them also has a QR code inviting guests to engage with Peninsula’s new Wellness Portal, where they can find information about all of the “Life Lived Best” amenities that have been rolling out since April.

While Roberts says most guests will receive them only on the first night of a stay, those who find them useful or enjoyable can request that they be replenished nightly. “We’ll probably even send you home with some, if you love them,” he explains.

Subtle Energies, the ayurvedic aromatherapy brand that produces the sleep patches, also has a partnership with the Rosewood Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Other hotels and hospitality brands are dabbling in a full range of sleep amenities as well.

The James in New York City offers a late-night “Insomnia Cart” in the lobby, stocked with CBD tinctures, sound machines, and weighted blankets.

(Some of the products are for sale, others available for loan.) Similarly, several Rosewood Hotels offer “Curated Sleep Boxes”—either for purchase or free as part of sleep-centric spa treatments—that contain silk eye masks, essential oils, sleep-inducing teas, and linen sprays.

Sleep patches made by several wellness companies may be the simplest and most novel of all such perks. It’s not hard to imagine them overtaking the generic chocolate on the pillow. “As a luxury brand, we’re happy to lead the charge,” says Roberts. “We would be delighted for more and more people to emulate this idea in their own way over the next few years.”

Updated: 7-15-2024

The New Holy Grail For Weight-Loss Drugs Is Sleep Apnea (This Is All Complete FDA-Approved BS)!!

“Why Inject Garbage Into Your Stomach When You Can Take Yerba Mate Tea (Or Something Similar And Natural) That Works On The Same Exact GLP-1 Receptors As Ozempic, Zepbound And The Others😹😂🤣?” Monty

Popular anti-obesity medicines are in testing for a range of other diseases. Positive results could prompt more insurers to pay up.

Whether millions of people will be able to afford one of the hot new weight-loss drugs could hinge on whether they cure the sleep apnea of people like Damon Sedgwick.

Sedgwick, a technology business analyst in Sydney, enrolled in a clinical trial in 2022 to test whether taking weekly injections of Eli Lilly’s anti-obesity drug Zepbound would alleviate the sleep apnea that had plagued his nights for years.

The medical thesis: Hefty weight loss from the drug would help open the airways of Sedgwick and other study subjects, reducing the frequent stops and starts to breathing while they slept.

The business thesis: Proving health benefits of drugs such as Zepbound beyond weight loss could persuade more health insurers to finally reimburse the expensive drugs, opening the door to billions of dollars in more sales.

Ozempic, Zepbound and their GLP-1 cousins have become wildly popular, ringing up more than a million prescriptions a week. But many people can’t get the medicines because their health plans don’t cover them and the drugs would cost upward of $1,300 a month out of pocket.

Health plans have traditionally shied away from paying for drugs that would help people to lose weight. Many plans have balked at reimbursing the new anti-obesity medicines because of cost.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the drugs’ makers, are betting insurers that have been resistant to covering weight-loss treatment will be more inclined to reimburse for other uses.

That is why the companies are sponsoring studies evaluating the medicines for a range of applications, from treating heart, kidney and liver disease to Alzheimer’s and sleep apnea.

“It builds this wall of evidence,” said Derek Asay, senior vice president of government strategy and federal accounts at Lilly. “It helps give that reason to believe there’s more than weight loss here.”

The studies are among the most closely watched by patients, doctors and investors.

Validation that the drugs work in sleep apnea alone would mean, Jefferies analysts estimate, $5 billion in additional sales for Zepbound. For tens of thousands of people seeking to take one of the drugs, it would also mean the difference between filling a prescription or not.

Positive study results could also transform care. In sleep apnea, said Dr. Ron Grunstein, a professor of sleep medicine at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Australia who helped run the Lilly-funded study, “You could argue this is just as important as the discovery of CPAP therapy 40 odd years ago,” referring to continuous positive airway pressure.

The efforts are already gaining traction. In March, the Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, based on a Novo Nordisk-sponsored study finding a 20% reduction in cardiovascular risk.

This cleared the way for some Medicare prescription-drug plans to pay for Wegovy’s use for the first time in patients with cardiovascular disease, though federal law still bars Medicare from covering the drugs for weight loss alone.

Some 3.6 million Medicare beneficiaries, about a quarter of the Medicare population, had both cardiovascular disease and excess weight—which could make them eligible for Wegovy coverage, health-policy nonprofit KFF estimated.

Meantime, insurers such as Sanford Health Plan, a nonprofit based in Sioux Falls, S.D., with about 200,000 members, are exploring covering the drugs for preventing heart attacks and strokes in people with cardiovascular disease.

“I do foresee more purchasers opting to include those medications as part of a comprehensive benefit program,” said Dr. Tommy Ibrahim, Sanford’s chief executive, though employers may ask people to try less expensive options or get prior approval first.

The new Wegovy heart use will lead to $3.2 billion in more yearly sales, BMO Capital Markets analysts estimate.

Originally developed for diabetes, the main ingredients of Novo’s Wegovy, Lilly’s Zepbound and related drugs work by mimicking gut hormones and suppressing appetite. The resulting weight loss, researchers, the drugs’ makers and patients surmised, could have other health benefits.

Take sleep apnea. About 30 million Americans have the disease, an interruption of breathing that can cause near-term fatigue and long-term complications such as heart problems if untreated.

Obesity is a common cause because fat deposits around the neck and mouth can narrow a person’s airway. Losing weight can ease or eliminate sleep apnea. Weight loss from bariatric surgery, for instance, can improve the condition.

Many patients use a CPAP machine—to get the oxygen they need. But the machines’ bulky masks can be uncomfortable.

Lilly launched sleep-apnea testing after seeing evidence tirzepatide—the drug that would become Zepbound—could treat obesity.

Sedgwick, 53 years old, enrolled in the Lilly-funded study of Zepbound, seeking both to lose weight and relieve his sleep apnea.

At the start, he spent an overnight at the Woolcock Institute, a sleep and respiratory clinic in Sydney, for a baseline evaluation. Researchers attached devices to his body to monitor his sleep and breathing, and recorded him with cameras and microphones as he tried to sleep. He couldn’t use a CPAP machine.

“Awful,” was how he described trying to sleep that night. Researchers determined he had severe sleep apnea.

He started losing 4 or 5 pounds a week. At his next overnight sleep-clinic visit, after about five months on Zepbound, researchers found that Sedgwick’s sleep apnea had all but disappeared—so much so that they recommended he stop using the CPAP machine.

By the end of the study in the fall of 2023, Sedgwick had lost more than 70 pounds and showed no signs of sleep apnea at the final overnight clinic visit. On a recent trip, he didn’t bring along his CPAP machine. “It was good not to travel with one,” he said.

Across the nearly 470 patients in two Lilly studies, Zepbound reduced the severity of sleep apnea by more than 60% compared with a placebo, according to the company. Many study subjects on Zepbound returned to normal breathing.

Lilly has applied to the FDA to approve Zepbound’s use to treat sleep apnea. A decision could come by the end of this year.

Updated: 2-7-2025

Sleeping More Can Help You Lose Weight, Study Indicates

Researchers from the University of Chicago found that an extra hour of sleep each night over three years could be equal to losing 26 pounds.

Getting more sleep may be a handy way of shedding those extra pounds, new research suggests.

Experts found that adding an hour or so more of sleep per night shaved around 270 calories off people’s daily diets – the equivalent of around three chocolate digestive biscuits.

Over three years, this could lead to a weight loss of 26lb – simply by sleeping more, the researchers said.

A team from the University of Chicago wanted to look at how sleep interacts with obesity and so carried out a clinical trial with 80 adults.

Writing in the journal Jama Internal Medicine, they found that young, overweight adults who habitually slept fewer than 6.5 hours a night were able to add an extra 1.2 hours of sleep per night after undergoing counselling to improve their sleeping habits.

The results showed that getting more sleep reduced people’s overall intake by an average of 270 calories per day, with some people consuming 500 fewer calories.

Dr Esra Tasali, from the University of Chicago’s sleep centre, said the study had not intended to look at weight loss.

“But even within just two weeks, we have quantified evidence showing a decrease in caloric intake and a negative energy balance – caloric intake is less than calories burned,” she said.

If healthy sleep habits are maintained over longer duration this would lead to clinically important weight loss over time.

“Many people are working hard to find ways to decrease their caloric intake to lose weight – well, just by sleeping more, you may be able to reduce it substantially.”

The study did not attempt to restrict people’s diets. Instead, they slept in their own beds, tracked their sleep with wearable devices, and otherwise followed a normal lifestyle without any instructions on diet or exercise.

“Most other studies on this topic in labs are short-lived, for a couple of days, and food intake is measured by how much participants consume from an offered diet,” said Dr Tasali.

“In our study, we only manipulated sleep, and had the participants eat whatever they wanted, with no food logging or anything else to track their nutrition by themselves.”

Instead, to track how many calories people were consuming, a clinically-proven method was used that looked at changes in people’s energy stores.

This urine-based test involves a person drinking water in which both the hydrogen and oxygen atoms have been replaced with less common, but naturally occurring, stable isotopes that are easy to trace.

Dr Tasali said that limiting the use of devices such as mobile phones before bedtime helped people get more sleep.

She added: “We saw that after just a single sleep counseling session, participants could change their bedtime habits enough to lead to an increase in sleep duration.”

“We simply coached each individual on good sleep hygiene, and discussed their own personal sleep environments, providing tailored advice on changes they could make to improve their sleep duration.”


Sleep Stage Definitions:


NREM or Non-rapid eye movement sleep is a type of sleep that includes three stages, characterized by little to no eye movement and varying levels of brain activity. It plays a crucial role in physical recovery, memory consolidation, and overall health.

REM Sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, is a stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, increased brain activity, and vivid dreaming. It plays a crucial role in memory consolidation, emotional processing, and overall brain health.

Core Sleep refers to the essential stages of sleep that are crucial for physical recovery and mental well-being, primarily including light sleep and deep sleep. It plays a vital role in processes like tissue repair, memory consolidation, and immune function.

Deep Sleep, also known as slow-wave sleep, is a crucial stage of the sleep cycle that helps the brain and body recover and regenerate. It is characterized by slow brain waves and is essential for memory consolidation, growth, and overall health.

Updated: 6-7-2024

The NEXTUP Model: A Science-based Perspective On Dreaming

Dreams have long been shrouded in mystery and associated with the supernatural, often seen as omens, messages from the gods, or glimpses into otherworldly realms. Throughout history, various cultures have attributed profound significance to dreams, interpreting them as divine guidance or as a means of communication with the spiritual world.

However, despite these rich cultural interpretations, it is crucial to approach dreams from a scientific perspective to unravel their true nature and function. Understanding dreams through a scientific lens not only demystifies them but also enhances our comprehension of the human mind, offering valuable insights into the intricate workings of our cognitive and emotional processes.

When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep by Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold offers a profound exploration into the enigmatic realm of dreaming, backed by rigorous scientific inquiry and innovative theoretical models.

The authors, both leading experts in the field of sleep research, unravel the complexities of why we dream and what our dreams signify.

The book delves deeply into the nature of dreams, emphasising their vital role in our cognitive and emotional lives. Zadra and Stickgold meticulously explain how dreams are not merely random occurrences but essential processes that help us navigate and adapt to the complexities of life.

Central to the book is the NEXTUP model, which stands for “Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities.” This model is a sophisticated framework that posits dreaming as a fundamental cognitive process where the brain explores vast networks of stored memories to generate new possibilities.

This model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the purpose and mechanics of dreaming. Here is a summary of the key elements of the NEXTUP model along with the research methods used:

Element 1: Exploration of Memory Networks: The model posits that dreaming is a process wherein the brain explores vast networks of stored memories. During this exploration, the brain searches for associations and connections among these memories that are not immediately apparent during wakefulness.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Sleep Studies And Experiments: By utilising electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers observed brain activity during REM sleep. These studies showed that memory-related areas like the hippocampus are highly active during dreaming.

Dream Reports And Analysis: Participants’ dream reports were analysed, revealing how dreams often incorporate elements from both recent experiences and long-term memories, supporting the idea of memory network exploration.

Element 2: Possibility Generation: Dreams create new possibilities by combining disparate pieces of information, fostering creativity and problem-solving, and often leading to innovative ideas and insights.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Memory And Learning Experiments: Experiments demonstrated that sleep, particularly REM sleep, improves problem-solving and creative thinking. Participants often showed enhanced performance on tasks requiring creative solutions after a night of dreaming.

Neuroimaging Techniques: Brain scans indicated that regions involved in creative thinking are active during REM sleep, supporting the model’s emphasis on possibility generation.

Element 3: Emotional Processing and Integration: Dreams help process and integrate emotional experiences, aiding in emotional regulation and resilience by replaying and reinterpreting these experiences within a broader context.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Dream Reports And Analysis: Analysis of dream content often shows a strong emotional component, with many dreams reflecting concerns and emotional issues from waking life.

Comparative Studies: Studies of individuals with disrupted REM sleep (e.g., due to sleep disorders) show difficulties in emotional regulation, underscoring the role of dreaming in emotional processing.

Element 4: Threat Simulation And Rehearsal: Dreaming provides a safe space for simulating and rehearsing responses to potential threats, preparing individuals for real-life challenges.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Dream Content Analysis: Many dreams involve threatening or challenging scenarios, which supports the idea that dreams function as a rehearsal for dealing with threats.

Comparative Studies: Research on populations with frequent nightmares (often related to PTSD) highlights how dreams can reflect and rehearse responses to waking life threats.

Element 5: Memory Consolidation And Reorganisation: Dreams play a crucial role in consolidating and reorganising memories, selectively reactivating recent experiences and integrating them with existing memories to strengthen important information while discarding less relevant details.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Memory And Learning Experiments: Participants show improved memory recall and performance on tasks learned before sleep, particularly after REM sleep, indicating that dreaming aids in memory consolidation.

Neuroimaging Techniques: Imaging studies reveal that regions involved in memory processing are highly active during REM sleep, supporting the role of dreams in reorganising memories.

Element 6: Narrative Construction: The fragmented and bizarre nature of dreams results from the brain’s attempt to weave diverse pieces of information into coherent narratives.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Dream Reports And Analysis: Detailed analysis of dream narratives shows that, despite their often bizarre content, dreams strive to create coherent stories, reflecting the brain’s effort to make sense of diverse information.

Element 7: Adaptive Function: Dreaming enhances cognitive flexibility and problem-solving abilities, enabling better adaptation to changing environments.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Problem-Solving And Creativity Studies: Studies demonstrate that individuals who dream about complex problems or tasks often show improved ability to solve these problems, highlighting the adaptive function of dreams.

Element 8: Neurobiological Mechanisms: The model is grounded in neurobiological processes, highlighting specific brain activity patterns during REM sleep, with active memory and emotion-related regions and less active logical thinking regions, facilitating memory exploration and emotional processing.

Research Methods And Evidence:

Neuroimaging Techniques: Advanced imaging studies confirm the unique patterns of brain activity during REM sleep, supporting the neurobiological basis of the NEXTUP model.

When Brains Dream is an insightful and scientifically grounded book that offers a new understanding of the purpose and mechanisms of dreaming. Unlike previous theories, such as Freud’s psychoanalytic model which emphasises unconscious desires, or Hobson and McCarley’s Activation-Synthesis model that views dreams as random byproducts of brain activity, the NEXTUP model highlights the purposeful and adaptive functions of dreams.

This book is essential reading for anyone fascinated by the science of sleep and dreams.

It not only offers a compelling new model for understanding the purpose of dreaming but also situates this model within the broader context of dream research, contrasting and building upon earlier theories to offer a richer, more integrated understanding of this vital aspect of human cognition.

Written By Rohan Roberts

Rohan Is The Director Of The Dubai Science Festival. He Is The Founder Of Intelligent Optimism And Café Scientifique Dubai.

He is currently the Director of Innovation and Future Learning at GEMS Education (world’s largest private education provider).

Dormio: Interfacing With Dreams

Inspiration

Sleep is a forgotten country of the mind. A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a third of our lives are spent asleep.

Current technological interfaces miss an opportunity to access the unique, imaginative, elastic cognition ongoing during dreams and semi-lucid states.

In turn, each of us misses an opportunity to use interfaces to influence our own processes of memory consolidation, creative insight generation, gist extraction, and emotion regulation that are so deeply sleep-dependent.

In this project, we explore ways to augment human creativity by extending, influencing, and capturing dreams in Stage 1 sleep. It is currently challenging to force ourselves to be creative because so much creative idea association occurs in the absence of executive control and directed attention.

Sleep offers an opportunity for prompting creative thought in the absence of directed attention, especially if dreams can be guided.

Scientific Background

During sleep onset, a window of opportunity arises in the form of hypnagogia, a semi-lucid sleep state where we all begin dreaming before we fall fully unconscious. Hypnagogia is characterized by phenomenological unpredictability, distorted perception of space and time, and spontaneous, fluid idea association.

Edison, Tesla, Poe, and Dalí each accessed this state by napping with a steel ball in hand; when the ball dropped to the floor below just as they fell asleep, they awoke to capture the creative ideas generated in their hypnagogic dreams.

Engineering & Experimentation

In this project, we modernize the steel ball technique using a custom sleep onset tracker and auditory feedback which we together call Dormio. With the Dormio system, we are able to reliably influence hypnagogic dreams and collect dream content. We found that active use of the “targeted dream incubation” protocol during hypnagogia can augment human creativity.

This Dormio system enables future research into sleep, an underutilized and understudied state of mind vital for memory, learning, and creativity. Dormio has been published at CHI and in Consciousness and Cognition. It has been used for several studies, both at the MIT Media Lab and in independent labs outside of MIT.

Contributors

This work has been highly collaborative. The following contributors, in alphabetical order by first name, have all made it possible: Abhinandan Jain, Adam Haar Horowitz, Christina Chen, Eyal Perry, Ishaan Grover, Kathleen Esfahany, Matthew Ha, Oscar Rosello, Pattie Maes, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Robert Stickgold, and Tomás Vega.

How Does Dormio Work?

The Dormio system is conceptually quite simple. The aim of the system is to influence and extend a transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. To achieve this, we must track the occurrence of this transitional state (hypnagogia) and then interrupt the user’s sleep to prevent them from slipping into deeper sleep stages.

In the Dormio system, a user wears a glove-like device with sensors. These sensors collect biosignals from the hand to measure changes in muscle tone, heart rate, and skin conductance.

In past research, all of these biosignals have been shown to change during the transition from wakefulness to sleep. When the biosignals signal the onset of sleep, a timer of a few minutes starts. At the end of the timer, an audio recording is played to ask the user for a dream report, bringing the wearer back into wakefulness, but ideally not into full wakefulness.

We record everything the user says during their dream report, which could be useful for users to play back later to avoid forgetting a potentially useful idea.

Following their dream report, the system then plays an audio cue, reminding the wearer to think of certain words (like “fork” or “rabbit”), in the hopes of integrating the cued topic into their next set of dreams.

The user then drifts back to sleep, with the cue in mind. In our laboratory testing, we have found that the cued words reliably entered the hypnagogic dreams of our users.

The system continues to track the state (awake or asleep) of the user, repeating the process described above of waking them up after a few minutes of sleep to collect a dream report. This protocol is carried out repeatedly to guide dreams and collect dream reports.

What Are Sleep Onset, Hypnagogia, Or Stage 1 Sleep? Do We Dream During Sleep Onset?

Sleep onset refers to the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Hypnagogia refers to a state occurring in the transition between wakefulness and sleep. Stage 1 sleep (also called NREM1 or N1 stage sleep) occurs as you fall asleep and is the first stage of non-REM sleep.

It typically lasts for only a few minutes. Most hypnagogic dreams occur during stage 1 sleep. A healthy debate exists around questions about dreaming during N1 in the scientific community.

Dreams experienced in hypnagogia have variably been called dreaming, lucid dreaming, hypnagogic hallucinations, or micro dreaming.

If you’re interested in a classification of dreaming’s core phenomenology and the placement of hypnagogia along this spectrum, please check out Tore Nielsen’s 2017 Paper on Microdream Neurophenomenology.

What’s New About Dormio Compared To The Steel Ball Technique And Other Past Sleep Neuroscience Tools?

We hope the Dormio both formalizes and extends the scope and capability of the steel ball technique to harness the creative potential of the sleep onset (hypnagogic) period.

In comparison to many other tools for sleep neuroscience, we built the Dormio to be a relatively inexpensive, unintrusive, and accessible tool for tracking sleep onset, while also bringing new capabilities to intervening in this stage to guide and collect dreams.

We’ve expanded on these ideas in more depth below.

The steel ball technique – famously used by Edison to gain insights into his inventions – is inspiring, but limited. Firstly, this technique relies solely on a coarse atonia (reduced muscle tone) signal and can only pinpoint one threshold of sleep onset (a loss of muscle control marked by the ball dropping).

The traditional steel ball technique also requires that people wake themselves up fully to record any dream content (thus reducing potential for further cycles of hypnagogia) and doesn’t facilitate dream theme guidance.

In contrast, the Dormio system improves granularity of tracking sleep onset by measuring several biosignals, expanding capabilities for detecting sleep onset based on electrodermal activity, heart-rate variability, and muscle tension.

Furthermore, the threshold associated with sleep onset for each of these measurements can be adjusted in software, enabling more personalization and the potential to tie feedback to multiple predetermined states defined by bio-signals.

Additionally, the Dormio system has been designed to prompt users for a dream report such that they are unlikely to slip into stage 2 sleep, while also avoiding startling users into full wakefulness, which helps enable users to have multiple rounds of targeted dream incubation.

Moreover, the Dormio initiates automatic audio recording alongside our auditory prompt for dream reports, allowing users to speak their dreams in semi-lucid states, instead of waking themselves up entirely to record reports through writing as would be needed with the traditional steel ball technique.

Compared to other sleep tracking tools, ours offers improvements in being a relatively inexpensive and comfortable formfactor, with the aim of improving its relevance outside of the laboratory setting.

Currently, much sleep tracking is done via polysomnography, which can be both unpleasant to wear and hugely expensive.

In addition to reducing barriers in cost and comfort, our system also offers unique interactions to enable interventions at sleep onset in the form of targeted dream incubation. We use audio prompts and cues to guide dreams and collect dream reports, and our research has shown that these audio cues reliably enter dream content.

Does This Technology Enable Lucid Dreaming?

A lucid dream is any dream in which the dreamer is aware of dreaming. In that sense, some Dormio users may experience a lucid dream. However, the popular culture reference to “lucid dreaming” usually refers to regaining lucidity in much later stage REM sleep many hours into sleep, not the hypnagogia that Dormio users experience within minutes after sleep onset.

A common question is if this technology can be extended to lucid dreaming. In our preliminary experiments with later-stage lucid dreaming, we found a few challenges that made it impractical for interface building.

Some challenges include that later-stage REM lucid dreaming requires a full night of sleep, not just a nap like hypnagogia; as such, it often requires waking you up in the middle of the night and potentially disturbing your sleep schedule.

It also involves full atonia unlike hypnagogia, so people would have much more difficulty describing their dreams without exiting them fully.

Lastly, lucid dreaming is much rarer for people to experience than hypnagogic dreams, and as such, it was really hard to conduct experiments on lucid dreams.

Additionally, when we chose to focus on sleep onset/hypnagogia, we were interested in a state that was semi-lucid (not fully lucid like late stage lucid dreaming) since in fully lucid dreaming, you are fully in control of your cognition in a way that seems less spontaneous than hypnagogic dreams.

We personally found the hypnagogic state more interesting for creative idea generation.

Still, late-stage lucid dreaming is super cool, important to the sciences, useful for self-exploration to so many people, and also just really fun, so we hope future work can eventually include lucid dreaming.

What Motivated The Development Of Dormio?

For Adam Haar Horowitz, the idea that there exists a state of mind which composes and constructs his conscious self, but remains inaccessible to him, was both frustrating and alluring.

Haar Horowitz says, “Hypnagogia is a ‘me’ that I am unfamiliar with, a ‘me’ that slips past memory as we drift into unconsciousness.

I would like to create a tool that I can hand people, that they can take home, and on their own explore and augment themselves.”

What Past Work Inspired You? Where Can I Read More About It?

This project is inspired by a very old technique – the steel ball technique – famously used by Edison to gain insights into his inventions.

Our work, which both formalizes and extends the scope and capability of this technique, is impossible without past work investigating possibilities of influencing dreams in the neuroscience lab.

This work includes that conducted by scientists like Stephen LaBerge and Benjamin Baird, who do wonderful work on later-stage lucid dreaming, focusing on the REM state.

Scientists like Jonathan Smallwood and Jonathan Schooler have done work on mind-wandering and creativity, inspiring our idea that fluid thinking outside of executive control in hypnagogia (like mind-wandering) could augment creativity.

Work by Deirdre Barrett compiling moments of inspiration found in sleep, and work by Robert Stickgold and Tore Nielsen on microdream phenomenology, all encouraged and informed us.

Andreas Mavromatis wrote a whole thesis on hypnagogia, and his writing gave us a sense of the poetry and practical applications of this state (as did Nabokov, Oliver Sacks, Yoga Nidra practitioners, and Edgar Allen Poe writing on hypnagogia).

Our sense of this vast work was given to us by the three advisors who have helped us most throughout this work, in and out of the classroom—Professors Pattie Maes, Ed Pace-Schott and Robert Stickgold.

How Did The Team Form And Develop Dormio?

The development of the Dormio device was enabled by a deeply interdisciplinary team composed of members of the Media Lab community, including Ishaan Grover, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Adam Haar Horowitz, Aby Jain, Tomás Vega, Oscar Rosello, Eyal Perry, Christina Chen, Matthew Ha and more. There is a bit written about that process on this website, and you can see earlier versions of the project there too.

It has been a long process! Ishaan Grover and Adam Haar Horowitz took the Human Machine Symbiosis class with Prof. Pattie Maes, while listening to Prof. Robert Stickgold lecture on dream states. We got together and tried to make an EEG detect sleep stages, and did a decent job detecting sleep spindles with a cheap Muse EEG, but thought that detection wouldn’t generalize across individuals.

We had friends like Rebecca Kleinberger and Sophia Yang who helped with our first glove prototype, and helped think through possible interaction designs. We had awesome subjects like Marie Therese Png who went in and out of hypnagogia and explained how our tech tweaks changed their experiences.

Now we have a team of cognitive scientists, engineers, and makers who create experiments and possibilities.

Plus we’ve had incredible past work to build with and build on from the neuroscience and HCI worlds, and advice and inspiration from mentors including Professors Pattie Maes, Ed Pace-Schott, and Robert Stickgold.

How Can I Get One?

We do not offer Dormio for sale. However, the technology that drives Dormio is open source, meaning that you can build one for yourself with the right materials and tools. The software for our biosignal tracking is on Github and our Eagle file for circuit board design is online. Tomás, who led that build, wrote about it step by step here.

Can I Try Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) Without These Technologies?

We hope for targeted dream incubation (TDI), the method implemented by the Dormio device, to be technology-agnostic. We have developed an online timer that can be used to self-administer TDI: .

What Are The Main Ethical Concerns Associated With Dormio?

We are deeply appreciative of questions about the ethical concerns about Dormio and the potential impacts of guiding dream content. A common question is whether this technology can be used for mind control. The answer is no; it’s a pretty terrible tool for mind control.

Importantly, in hypnagogia, subjects are not entirely asleep (and not entirely awake), making them much less vulnerable than most people typically assume when they first learn about this project.

Participants are aware that they are in an experiment room, though that awareness drifts in and out. Most, but not all, remember what they said throughout the experiment.

Notably, we have had people wake themselves up when they had a weird enough dream that they did not want us experimenters to hear about it, and nothing in our system or protocol forced people to disclose things that they did not want to share; I

n other words, in hypnagogia, people are able to monitor their environment and be aware of their descent into sleep, limiting the capacity for inserting any ideas people don’t want inserted, or extracting ideas they don’t want extracted.

All that being said, we don’t dismiss these ethical concerns at all. Even in its current state, this technology and the targeted dream incubation methodology raises ethical considerations regarding the impacts it may have on users.

For example, the process of encouraging people to dream about certain subjects may change how they consider those subjects after waking up. We do not discount some diminished capacity for resistance to new ideas presented in hypnagogia.

These are all things to keep in mind, although it is also worth acknowledging that hypnagogia has been known about and used for hundreds of years (for example, by Edison and other creative greats) and not used to nefarious ends, as far as we are aware.

To provide clarity on how this tool can be used, the Dream Engineering community is collectively writing a “Dream Engineering Ethic” in which outline our principles as a scientific community.

We acknowledge that there is a fine line between using dream incubation for creative purposes, and using it for manipulation (such as advertising).

We have expanded on our stance on dream advertising here (in addition to other platforms). We were pleased that the issue was raised on the floor of the Federal Trade Commission and has been written about in law journals.

Where Has This Work Been Shown?

The Dormio device has been shown at the CHI 2018 Conference, Ars Electronica, the Science of Consciousness 2018 Conference, and the National Academy of Sciences. The project has also been shown in MIT’s Museum Studio, covered in Studio International, and shown on ABC’s 60 Minutes.

What Are The Next Projects You’re Planning?

We have many projects in the works. We want to extend our targeted dream incubation protocol to be device-free using online interfaces.

We also want to test whether content we guide into hypnagogic dreams transfers into later stage REM dream content. Finally, we also want to test the memory, learning, and emotion regulation effect of guided hypnagogic dream content.

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