/ News
Your dreams can be controlled by electrically stimulating your brain
It appears that applying an electrical current to your brain not only boosts your cognitive powers, but it can also help you obtain the mystical ability of lucid dreaming, where you can control the plot and outcome of your dreams. These findings come from a new study that found that lucid dreaming could be induced in a full 70% of participants, with a simple (external) electrical current passed across the frontal lobe. This has obvious applications for body hackers — but perhaps more importantly it may have a medical use, too, in helping people who suffer from chronic nightmares.
A lucid dream, if you haven’t heard of the phrase before, is a dream where you know that you’re dreaming. So the theory goes, if you’re aware that you’re dreaming, you can then exert some kind of control over your brain’s imagination, resulting in some very fun, wild, and vivid dreams. Some people report being naturally lucid dreamers, while body hackers try to artificially induce a lucid dream state with various different techniques (mostly involving meditation or setting an alarm for a few hours after you fall asleep). Scientifically, some studies have shown that during lucid dreaming there’s increased activity in your brain’s frontal and parietal (top/side) lobes — regions of the brain that are involved with higher-level conscious thought. Skeptics think that lucid dreaming is more like small snippets of wakefulness interspersed with normal REM dreaming, rather than a bona fide dream state.
In this study, the researchers — mostly from a bunch of universities in Germany — asked 27 men and women to spend a few nights sleeping in a special sleep lab in Germany. After the participants entered REM sleep, where most dreaming occurs, an electric current was passed across their skull, stimulating the front and temporal lobes. The researchers found that when the electrical current was a very specific frequency — between 25 and 40Hz — a full 70% of participants experienced lucid dreams. When no current was present, or the wrong frequency, not a single participant had a lucid dream. [doi:10.1038/nn.3719 - "Induction of self awareness in dreams through frontal low current stimulation of gamma activity"]
Lucid dreaming, frequency response at 25 and 40Hz. “Sham” is the amount of lucid dreaming when electrodes were attached, but no frequency was applied.
This research strongly indicates that a) higher-order consciousness is intrinsically linked to these frequencies between 25 and 40Hz, and b) lucid dreaming is triggered and controlled by the regions of your brain that govern consciousness and self-awareness. That particular block of 25-40Hz is usually considered a “typical” gamma wave, reinforcing the theory that gamma waves — the synchronous firing of neurons at that frequency of around 40Hz — is what gives humans their higher-level functions.
The hardware needed to enter a lucid dreaming state is not complex. (This is a tDCS headset.)
The study didn’t tackle the topic of whether you are technically asleep or not during (induced) lucid dreams (but to be honest, it doesn’t really matter at this point — if it gives you the ability to control your dreams, and it feels like you’re dreaming, then who cares?) It’s also important to note that this was a very short-term study — the long-term effects of regularly inducing a lucid sleep state are not yet known.
Medically, the only immediate application for the study is the treatment of chronic nightmares, where being able to steer your imagination away from hellish thoughts would be a rather fine thing. For body hackers, it should be fairly easy to set up some kind of EEG that detects when you enter REM sleep, and then to provide an electrical current at 40Hz. Cheap USB EEGs have been available for a couple of years now, and a standard tDCS headset could be modified to provide the necessary current/frequency. Obviously I can’t recommend that you try it at home. But I probably will.
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182209-lucid-dreaming-can-be-controlled-with-electric-stimulation-of-the-brain-body-hackers-and-chronic-nightmare-sufferers-rejoice
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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