iPhones are dreamy. That’s what psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman is hoping using a free app called Dream On that will monitor dreams of users and create the world’s largest dream experiment.
A total of 10,000 participants will be involved in the social experiment launched in Edinburgh international science festival via Dream:ON app for iPhone, aiming to create the world’s largest dream bank.’
The revolutionary app promises to “help create your desired dream” – simply by tapping into an iPhone the dream you wish (whether its to marry Natalie Portman or be given a free Porsche 911) before heading to the land of nod.
The iPhone is placed on your bed and Dream:ON begins monitoring sleep patterns and plays a musical ‘soundscape’ designed to help create the ideal dream.
 Click to enlarge |
Whilst your chosen soundscape is playing, Dream:ON continues to monitor your movement and adjusts the volume accordingly to ensure you’re not woken up.
The app also works as smart alarm that will wake you up in the am.
Dream:ON is a social experiment – in the morning presents a graph of sleep movement during the night, allows you to tag any of your friends who appeared in your dreams via Facebook (just like you would when you tag a picture) and invites you post a short description of your dream to the ‘Dream Bank’.
“We have created a new way of carrying out mass participation experiments. We still know relatively little about the science of dreaming and this app may provide a real breakthrough in changing how we dream, and record and track those dreams,” says Professor Richard Wiseman.
Research indicates most dreams occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, and also that the mind is particularly alert to other senses during this stage of sleep, hence the music Dream:ON plays appeals to the subconscious during REM.
Almost everyone dreams several times each night.
