Sigmund, the app that influences dreams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&gl=US&client=mv-google&v=Khu3_SpgRas&nomobile=1

We always joke about the common phrase “there is an app for that”. However, there is now REALLY an app to tap into the sub-conscious of one of Freud’s most favorite categories in his psychoanalytical studies. There is an app now developed from graduate students at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that attempts to influence how you dream. Sigmund is a new iPhone app that is priced at 99 cents that helps users choose the objects or environments they want to envision during sleep. The app was sparked from the interest of sleep and dreams in sleep-dependent learning. They studied  the role of sleep in learning new tasks and how the brain processes outside stimuli during sleep. Through this, Harvard students contact MIT to help in the development. The app is fairly simple to work. People can select up to five different subjects they want the app to softly repeat during their REM sleep cycle. The app is very subtle and it whispers to the dreamer. Dreamers can choose up to 1000 different words ranging from New York to grandmother.  They then set alarm times for the time they want to go to bed and the time they plan on waking up. Just like some common iphone apps already that use the phone to monitor sleep movement, this app gauges when someone has reached their deepest and lightest points of sleep. It is like a new form of Inception, however more practical. It is estimated that normal cycled sleepers will actually be influenced by the app about a third of the time. I definitely am considering buying this app to see if it actually works! This app reminds me of another concept that is revolved around lucid dreams. A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.   In a lucid dream, the dreamer can have some degree of control over their actions within the dream and/or to be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream. Talk about Inception is real life. Imagine how many fun dreams could arise out of having a lucid dream and using Sigmund at the same time.