Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Sleeping for science!

Yesterday I got the Dream:ON app. It's the brain child of Richard Wiseman, and is for a mass participation experiment: the app will play a soundscape of your choosing which can (hopefully) influence the dream you're having. It also has an alarm to wake you up, and prompts you to fill in the dream diary, where you can record if you were aware of the soundscape, and what your dream was.

I used the app last night, and selected a peaceful rainforest. However, what I actually dreamt was about eating sausages with sauce on. The alarm woke me up, and to turn it off, you're taken to your dream diary. This is a good feature for me. I like to hit snooze, but with this, it gets me doing something and being active to wake up. Here's my dream diary from last night:


As the graph shows, I had a bit of a restless night. I am aware that I toss and turn a lot in my sleep, but I've generally regarded myself as a good sleeper (hence my use of homeopathic sleeping pills for my homeopathy overdose). I don't know if that graph is the norm, or if I tossed and turned more than usual on account of being excited by the app (which I was) and expecting something to happen. We'll see, as I shall try to use it each night, and those feelings will undoubtedly pass.

I also like that you can tag friends that were involved on Facebook, which could also be fun (but not without potential problems).

One quibble and one possible problem:

Quibble: The app comes with two soundscapes and the others need buying. They're not that expensive, but it would have been nice to come with a slightly wider variety of soundscapes. That said, there'll be more soundscapes (free and paid) coming each month, and this is probably my penniless student side coming through.

Problem: I'm in a distance relationship, and so week nights I have a bed to myself, but not so at weekends. When sharing a bed, my partner's movements might get picked up by the app, leading to a false graph.

Android app is coming out later in the year too. I'd definitely recommend taking part!

3 comments:

  1. Now every time you go to the rainforest you'll be hungry for sausages.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gaetan620 - I haven't used headphones, wouldn't want to for a whole night's sleep, but give it a go if you think it will help, why not?

    Grundy - possibly : )

    ReplyDelete

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