Okay, Chelsea, this week in Fringy Minis, I think this is somewhat in line with the talk about AI and technology that we've been having, but it elaborates a little on it. And it's most importantly from one of our favorite sources, Vice News. Of course. This is posted on November 3rd and written by Becky Ferrara. Scientists are researching a device that can induce lucid dreams on demand. Yeah, sounds pretty interesting, hey?
Yeah. Have you ever had the bizarre experience of seemingly waking up inside your own dream? You can tell you're not fully conscious. That's a dreamscape all around you after all, but you're aware enough to be able to control parts of the phantasm. These so-called lucid dreams can be extremely meaningful and transformative moments for the roughly half of adults who are reported having them at least once in their lifetime.
That's why a new tech star, Prophetic, aims to bring lucid dreams to a much wider audience by developing a wearable device designed to spark the experience when desired. Prophetic is the brainchild of Eric Wolberg, its chief executive officer, and Wesley Louis Berry III. Its chief technology officer. How can you have the name the third and be a technology officer? Those just seem like they can't be the same. Like one of those has a crown in scepter and the other is a tech guy.
I love your rubbery- Always sweatpants. Anyhow, the pair co-founded the company earlier this year with the goal of combining technologies such as ultrasound and machine learning models to, quote, detect when dreamers are in REM, a rapid eye movement sleep, to induce and stabilize lucid dreams, end quote with a device called the Halo according to the company website. And here's a quote from Wolberg himself. It's an extraordinary thing to become aware in your mind and in your own dreams.
It's a surreal and spiritual experience. Recreationally, it's the ultimate VR experience. You can fly, you can make a building rise out of the ground, you can talk to dream characters, and you can explore, end quote. Berry also has a quote here. The list of benefits of lucid dreaming is long. There's everything from helping with PTSD, reducing anxiety and improving mood, confidence, motor skills and creativity. The benefits are really outstanding, end quote.
Prophetic does not make any medical claims about its forthcoming products. Halo is tentatively slated to be released in 2025. Though Wolberg and Berry both expressed optimism about broader scientific research that suggests lucid dreams can reduce PTSD, related nightmares, promote mindfulness, and open new windows into the mysterious nature of consciousness.
To explore those links further, Prophetic has partnered with the Daunders Institute, a research centered at Radboud University in the Netherlands that is focused on neuroscience and cognition to generate the largest data set of electroencephalogram. Don't know how to say that. And functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI observations of lucid dreamers according to the company.
The collaboration will also explore one of the central technologies behind Prophetic's vision, known as transcranial focused ultrasounds. This noninvasive technique uses low intensity ultrasound pulses to probe the brain and interact with neural activity with a depth and precision that cannot be achieved with previous methods such as transcranial electrical stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Quote, it is great to see and support the development of lucid dreaming devices for home use that implement potent technologies such as transcranial ultrasound, while high density studies in the lab are necessary to fully describe lucid dreaming, the ultimate goal of this research is broad applicability. This cannot be achieved when subjects have to come to the lab to experience them.
And home devices to improve sleep experience, including lucid dream induction, have been around for quite a few years, but they were rather bulky and had rather low induction rates. They focus neuromodulation is a recent technological development and that has huge potential, not only for lucid dream induction, but to flexibly alter other parameters of sleep and cognition as well. It is exciting to see that this will be possible and what the limits may be.
Said Nico Adelhofer, a researcher at Daunder's Sleep and Memory Lab, who is working with prophetic. So at this point, both the possibilities and limits of prophetic's concept remain unclear, while ultrasound devices have been widely used in medicine for decades. The process of stimulating parts of the brain with TUS is a relatively new development.
And within the past few years, scientists have shown that TUS has the potential to be used both as a scientific instrument to investigate brain function and as a therapeutic modality to modulate brain activity. According to a 2019 study and could be a useful tool in the treatment of a clinical disorder characterized by negative mood states like depression and anxiety disorders. I think that's a good spot to stop it.
And just because I forgot to define it earlier to U.S.'s trans cranial focused ultrasounds. I feel like this is the starting of a horror movie. I mean, it's good. It sounds good, but I feel like so much can go wrong. And that's just my feeling. It's based on absolutely nothing except watching Nightmare on Elm Street. It does feel a little bit like my... His name wasn't Freddy Krueger, was it? There was no Freddy Krueger.
There was a third person, but... I mean, that just sounds like something Freddy Krueger would disguise his nightmares. It reminds me of a, oh, David Cronenberg movie from like early 2000s, where it's like you're playing a video game and like if you die and you die in real life and it's like you plug in and like very organic stuff. Very Cronenberg-esque, but I'm curious. It's something that probably we won't actually see in our lifetimes, but it's curious nonetheless.
It is. No, it's a good article. And I mean, it could be good. I mean, I don't see anything wrong with it other than the fact that I... Maybe it's just too many scary movies. Yeah, it seems when people are fucking with dreams, it's always a horror movie, is it not? Oh yeah, of course, yes. All the bad guys want into your dreams. Yeah, actually, and that makes sense where the third comes in. Yeah, he's a bad guy. Because anybody who is a third is a bad guy. Just has to be.
Yeah, the third one is always a bad guy. Yeah, because you know, that means you're your child of plotters who have been plotting for generations to at least name you the third and plotters are evil. Let's face it. You know what? I was actually thinking the other day, have you ever heard of someone like the fifth or sixth? You ever meet someone? There's lots of royalty that do that. Like, King Henry the Eighth is the most famous of them. Right, okay, you got me. Okay, that's a good example.
Yeah, okay, yeah, it exists. But yeah, that at least gives you something to ponder and maybe to think of a fucking with dreams movie that isn't a horror movie that you can tell us about because I'm pretty sure they're just all horror movies. Yeah, we want a good happy story, fairy tale. If you can't do it in the next 48 hours, just forget about it because that's your time limit on this. So, see you Friday. Get on it, bye.