I Tried New Tech That Claimed It Could Hack My Dreams

When I try to trace back my fascination with dreams, a certain memory pops into my head. I was nine years old, sitting in the kitchen of my childhood home in Oshawa, Ontario. My feet snaked around the legs of a creaky wooden chair. My parents hadn’t renovated the kitchen yet, so I was surrounded by faded blue-flowered wallpaper. I pulled my long hair off my face and tilted my head back. Our German shepherds, Pepper and Spice, circled the room, then paused to take a closer look. My father wrestled with a tangle of colourful wires and a pot of sticky white paste. He consulted an official-looking book, then glanced back at me over the large round rims of his glasses, determining where to place the electrodes.

My dad, Murray Moffat, is a sleep doctor. In 1982, he opened one of the first independent sleep laboratories in Canada. He became interested in sleep while working as a coroner. When he was called to a site, he would sometimes find a person in bed or on the couch, having died inexplicably in their sleep. It often appeared to be a coronary, but why, he wondered, were so many people having heart attacks in the night? At the time, sleep studies were mostly run in universities and hospitals, and my dad remembers them being performed in the halls of a Toronto psychiatric institute. He decided to set up a facility dedicated to diagnosing and treating sleep disorders.

As a kid, I imagined my childhood home as its own kind of sleep lab. The bedrooms had blackout blinds and mattresses with just the right firmness. At night, the temperature was a cool sixty-eight degrees. Around the house, there were stacks of the journal Sleep and balls of knotted electrodes that my dad was always repairing for his actual sleep lab. It was a house wired for sleep, and I was my dad’s first lab “assistant.” In our kitchen, he would hook me up with electrodes to practise the patient set-up, and I’d help him string cables throughout the house, testing the computer networks for his lab. I watched him flip through test sleep records, each a paper tower of 1,000 pages, as he scanned for renegade sleep patterns inked onto an accordion of crisp white paper.

Sometimes we would drive into Toronto, where he was setting up his sleep lab at the Medical Arts Building on Bloor Street. It had three bedrooms, where his patients would soon sleep. Each headboard had an emerald-green box the electrodes were plugged into, and the bedrooms were soundproof. All you could hear was the soothing whir of cool air.

At the other end of a skinny hallway was the control area that housed three mammoth polysomnography (PSG) machines. Each had a shiny, stainless-steel frame and a panel of knobs and switches that I resisted flicking back and forth for fear of shutting down the entire lab. Blank sleep records were fed into the PSGs, which inked the pages with scribbling pens. As patients slept, electrodes would send signals to the machines, recording their brain activity, movement, and breathing. I envisioned the lab as a cross between a hotel, with fresh sheets and towels, and a top-secret government facility tracking the secrets of the night.

I was there so my dad could make sure all the equipment worked properly. My father would watch the controls as I blinked and breathed in and out. Then he would leave me to do what I did best: sleep. Within minutes, my dreaming brain would transport me from the small bedroom to strange and unexpected places.

I still remember sitting next to my dad as he took me through my sleep record. He flipped through the accordion of crisp pages so fast that it seemed like the squiggly lines that had tracked my brain activity, breathing, and eye movement were moving. It reminded me of my homemade flip books of moving images, of flying birds and crashing waves.

The nine-year-old kid in me is still in complete wonder of the dreams that sleep offers.

Sleep and dreams have always been comforting to me. When I was a kid, I would fall asleep to escape bad turbulence on a flight or snowstorms as we drove across the Prairies to visit family. I would even fall asleep if I was bored. In dreams, there was so much to investigate and explore. I loved the freedom of letting my mind wander and pursue whatever wild thoughts I could imagine, unrestrained by the demands and distractions of the day.

Dreaming was its own kind of freedom of thought and expression. The nine-year-old kid in me is still in complete wonder of the dreams that sleep offers. I’m as fascinated by the fantasy as by the reality of dreams; the fictions our dreaming brain creates, and the real moments on which it shines a spotlight.

I was a writer on assignment, and I was being sent to my most remote location yet. One humid summer afternoon, I travelled to the border between the waking and dreaming worlds, the time zone where thoughts and images tumbled into each other, transforming into the wild and wonderful stuff that dreams are made of. I ventured into sleep onset, the first few minutes of sleep that are so light I could still hear the kids giggling and shrieking as they ran through the icy water of a sprinkler a few backyards over.

As my tired body settled into bed, my mind sifted through memories from the day. It’s thought that during the first few minutes of sleep, our brain tags certain memories to revisit later in the night. I wondered which thoughts and experiences would make their way into my dreams. This is a natural process that happens to all of us. But what if we don’t want to leave our dreams to chance? What if we want certain thoughts to jump the queue and get front-of-the-line priority to shape our dreams?

For more than 5,000 years, people have used different waking rituals and practices to dream about a chosen topic, a technique known as dream incubation. To achieve this purpose, from ancient Egypt and Greece to India, North Africa, and Australia, people have practised fasting, bathing in cold water, or sleeping in a temple, shrine, or cave. Some people sought knowledge, while others looked for spiritual enlightenment or healing. Cures included rest, exercise, eating figs and ashes from a god’s altar, or being suspended upside down. Today, the sacred practice continues for many societies and religions around the world. This includes Indigenous peoples who value dreams as sources of guidance, knowledge, and creative inspiration.

What’s new, and what I set out to investigate, is Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI), which uses external stimuli to connect with a dreamer and encourage them to focus on a particular topic or theme. Adam Haar and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University developed this contemporary incubation method using sound and touch to reach a dreamer as they traversed through sleep onset, moving from waking to sleep. These first few minutes of sleep are characterized by hypnagogia: dreamy thoughts and images that are often related to recent waking experiences. As a montage of images, thoughts, and sensations flooded a person’s mind, a voice recording prompted them to focus on a chosen topic.

TDI is part of the emerging field of dream engineering that uses technology to connect with dreamers and help them guide their dreams. Just as sounds or other stimuli are employed to boost memory consolidation during sleep or help dreamers become lucid, this novel technique uses stimuli to guide people’s thoughts as they drift off, with the hope of influencing their dreams. It is well established that we often dream about experiences from earlier in the day, and the thoughts that swirl around our heads as we fall asleep can influence our dreams. Research shows that if we are ruminating over negative thoughts during sleep onset, it’s more likely that we will have bad dreams later in the night. The loop of negative thoughts even makes our sleep quality worse.

As I pulled the blinds, silenced my phone, and prepared for my makeshift dream experiment, I wondered how difficult it would be to forget about what was on my mind and guide my dream thoughts.

“Sleep can’t be forced. Just allowed,” explained Haar in an instructional video that I watched before I began my dream experiment.

I had chatted with Haar several times, and he kindly agreed to help me set up my own TDI session. The dream researcher made it very simple and low tech. First, I picked a topic to think about. In the TDI study, Haar had subjects incubate on the theme of a tree, so that was what I chose to try and dream about. Then I recorded a voice prompt that would play as soon as I closed my eyes, telling me to keep the intended thought in my mind. Once I moved from drowsiness to light sleep, the recording would replay to focus my dreamy thoughts on trees. I recorded a different prompt that would play once I had been in light sleep for a few more minutes.

With my laptop beside me on the bed, I hit the “start” button and began my first of five guided naps. As I slid on my eye mask and settled in, a recording of my voice told me to “remember to think of a tree.” Images of different trees flashed through my mind like a stack of cue cards. There was the lilac tree in my backyard. The forsythia tree that had lost its vibrant yellow flowers. The maple tree in front of our house that wouldn’t seem to grow. None of these images kept my attention. Oh, wait. What about the cedars along the back of our yard? They were eight feet tall now, but I pictured them as tiny saplings. We had transplanted them from the woods behind the log cabin that my husband’s family used to own. It was a way of holding on to the cabin after it was sold.

My mind flooded with memories of our time at the cabin. Playing cards by the warmth of the wood stove. Bursting out into the refreshing cold for our midnight walk on Christmas Eve. The sound of snow crunching beneath our boots as we followed the narrow, winding road through the trees, our path illuminated by the moon. A pile of us tobogganing down the hill from the cabin, our laughter echoing through the valley. I had a quick intermission from my thoughts as I registered the monotone beeping sound of a truck backing up outside my house. Within seconds, I was back at the cabin.

A recording of my voice interrupted my thoughts and reminded me to think of a tree.

I imagined those sweltering summer nights when we tried to sleep on the screened porch while a symphony of cicadas played around us. I could still feel the stillness of the place, surrounded by darkness, with no one around for miles.

A recording of my voice interrupted my thoughts and reminded me to think of a tree. I tried to stay focused on the idea of a tree while I let my mind roam. It was a kind of mental see-saw as my mind focused and let go over and over again. It reminded me of story meetings at a magazine where I used to work. I’d brainstorm story ideas with other writers and editors. We would try to stay on track, but inevitably, our conversations would get carried away.

Some of the best ideas came when we veered off in different directions. Haar said that the verbal prompts weren’t intended to wake me up. They wouldn’t let me fall into a deep sleep either. This delicate balance allowed me to maintain awareness of the strange thoughts that kept popping into my head.

Oh, wait. There was that willow tree. I had almost forgotten about it. It must have been twenty years ago, when my husband, Dimitri, and I planted a cutting from a willow tree beside the cabin’s circular gravel driveway, and against all odds, it grew. It grew so tall that it began to bend toward the other side of the narrow driveway, creating a lush, green archway to drive under.

This reminded me of a horseshoe. In my mind, I threw the horseshoe across the valley, into the woods. Haar had said to “enjoy the changes that sleeping creates in your thought patterns,” so I just went with it. I was transported back to the day that Dimitri and I got lost in the forest for hours, turning ourselves around until every tree looked the same.

While I was in the in-between world of sleep onset, something strange happened. As I imagined myself standing in the forest, staring at the thick, twisted tree branches, the branches scooped me up and placed me on top of the canopy of trees. I could see the cabin. It was so close. I couldn’t believe it. How could we have been so lost that day?

I moved up and down with the sway of the trees, and the canopy became an ocean. The water was so dark it appeared black. I wondered what was underneath me as I moved along with the waves. I grabbed fistfuls of water, and the tips of my fingers grazed something. I grabbed hold and pulled it out of the water and discovered that it was the roots of a tree. I wondered if this is what I was supposed to be thinking of. Do roots count? Or did it need be the entire tree? I remembered Haar saying that it was okay to think abstractly about a tree. My thoughts could shift and change. It didn’t need to be a concrete idea.

One image tumbled into another until I found myself lying on the grass in front of my childhood home. It was cool in the shade of the birch tree, and I watched the leaves flutter in the breeze. Somehow, I was wearing my kid-sized Snoopy PJs. They used to be my absolute favourite, and I focused on them for a bit. Woodstock was perched on Snoopy’s nose. Oh, how I loved those PJs. I refocused my internal camera and took a wide shot of myself lying on the grass.

I thought of the tree roots beneath me. The roots became veins that began to pump with blood, full of life. Then they broke through the earth and enveloped me. But I wasn’t scared. I didn’t get the feeling that I was being suffocated. It was more like the comfort of a strong hug. Then the root-veins broke through the ground underneath my old house and lifted it into the sky. The house landed in my backyard where I now live. My parents walked out of the house with my mom wearing her now-vintage massive red glasses. Then the scene evaporated when my recorded voice asked, “Tell me, what were you thinking about?”

So, it worked. I dreamt of a tree. Many trees, actually, and the images of cedars, pines, and birches made me think of memories that I had long forgotten. Places and events from another time.

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It’s the combination of free thinking and awareness of spontaneous thought that makes the first stage of sleep a natural sleep-induced brainstormer of creative insights and ideas.

Haar and a group of researchers tested whether incubating a topic in stage-one sleep affected waking creativity. Unlike my low-tech, at-home experiment, the study used a sleep tracking device called Dormio, which was invented by Haar in collaboration with scientists at MIT and Harvard. The concept and creation of Dormio were part of Haar’s master’s degree and PhD at MIT.

The market is crowded with sleep trackers. An interesting feature of Dormio is its live sleep staging. Most off-the-shelf trackers give only a summary of data for a sleep report, averaging out data from across the night. Dormio’s high-quality sensors provide live data across the cycle, allowing for more precise analysis. Dormio is a wearable device with a band around the wrist that is connected by wires to small bands around the index and middle fingers. The device is fitted with sensors that identify changes in heart rate, muscle tone, and perspiration as someone enters sleep onset. Dormio is connected to an app where a user records verbal cues to guide dream thoughts. At certain times, these recordings are played to prompt the user to think of a specific theme and then, later on, report what they were thinking about.

The results were remarkable, highlighting the creative nature of stage-one sleep. The researchers examined the impact of incubation on people’s dreams. In the sleep incubation group, 70 percent of dream reports directly referred to the theme of a tree.

Dream engineering is now moving beyond the lab as scientists design apps and other tools that we can use at home.

Today, technology allows dream scientists to use tools like Dormio to target different sleep stages and attempt to influence dreams across the night. Beyond incubating on a certain topic for creative inspiration or problem solving, dream-engineering techniques aim to rewrite nightmares, facilitate lucid dreaming, consolidate memories, and boost learning. This is done using different kinds of external stimuli, like sound, smell, or touch, which are introduced at certain stages in the sleep cycle.

Dream engineering is now moving beyond the lab as scientists design apps and other tools that we can use at home. Haar and his MIT lab mate Tomás Vega launched the Dust app, which is translating this exciting dream research into products for the public. Its tag line encompasses the power and possibility of dream engineering: “We change dreams. Dreams change us.” Dust has several programs to choose from. You can focus on improving dream recall, incubate on a chosen dream topic, or work on reducing nightmares and stress dreams.

If scientists can use technology to influence and guide our dreams, then, in theory, it is possible to harness this other realm of thought and experience to create big change, both in our waking and dreaming lives. With open and creative dreaming minds, when we are released from waking influences and demands, we could rewrite distressing dreams and cultivate calm, peaceful sleep. We could use our dreams to heal and improve our well-being.

There are also a number of philosophical and ethical questions to consider. Is it possible for companies to influence consumers’ dreams? Dream studies have shown that at certain times, the dreaming brain is susceptible to suggestion during sleep. Sounds and other stimuli have been used to trigger consolidating of memories, to boost learning, to help dreamers become lucid, and to curb an unwanted habit. With my at-home dream incubation session, I learned how we can guide our thoughts during the first few minutes of sleep. It made me wonder, if dream tech tools are in many of our homes, can companies sell to us while we are asleep and possibly unaware and impressionable?

Much as in a dream, we are at the creative brainstorming stage where we chase ideas, stress-test theories, and seize the power of possibility. This is just the beginning, and beginnings are full of discovery and promise.

Adapted and excerpted, with permission, from The Brain Never Sleeps: Why We Dream and What It Means for Our Health by Karen van Kampen, published by Simon & Schuster Canada, 2026.