It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi thriller, but scientists have successfully “engineered” people’s dreams to help them solve complex problems upon waking.
In a study that eerily mirrors the Christopher Nolan film — participants even watched Inception before going to bed — researchers at Northwestern University used sound cues to infiltrate volunteers’ REM sleep.
The findings, published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, provide the first rigorous evidence that “dream engineering” is possible and can directly boost creative problem-solving skills.
“Many problems in the world today require creative solutions,” says Ken Paller, a senior author of the study. “By learning more about how our brains are able to think creatively… we could be closer to solving the problems we want to solve, and sleep engineering could help.”
Solving puzzles in sleep
To test the theory, the researchers recruited 20 people with experience in lucid dreaming — the state of being aware you are dreaming.
Before sleeping, the volunteers attempted to solve a series of difficult brain-teasers, each paired with a unique “soundtrack”. During the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep, the researchers played the sounds associated with the puzzles the participants had failed to solve, a technique known as Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR).
The results were striking. When participants incorporated the puzzles into their dreams, they solved them 42 per cent of the time the next morning, compared with just 17 per cent for puzzles they did not dream about.
Signals from the dream world
The study went a step further into science fiction territory by establishing two-way communication. Several participants signalled to the researchers that they were dreaming and working on the puzzle by sniffing in a specific pattern or moving their eyes left and right while fast asleep.
However, the technique proved effective even when the dreamers were not lucid.
“Even without lucidity, one dreamer asked a dream character for help solving the puzzle we were cueing,” says lead author Karen Konkoly. “Another was cued with the ‘trees’ puzzle and woke up dreaming of walking through a forest.”
Targeted dreamers
The study found that for a subgroup of “targeted dreamers” — those whose dreams were successfully influenced by the sounds — the cues significantly increased problem-solving ability from 20 per cent to 40 per cent.
“My hope is that these findings will help move us towards stronger conclusions about the functions of dreaming,” says Konkoly. “Hopefully people will start to take dreams seriously as a priority for mental health and wellbeing.”
