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Science

'Sleep Language' Could Enable Communication During Lucid Dreams (arstechnica.com) 46

Posted by BeauHD from the reaching-lucidity dept.
Researchers have developed a "language" called Remmyo, which relies on specific facial muscle movements that can occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. People who are capable of lucid dreaming can learn this language during their waking hours and potentially communicate while they are asleep. Ars Technica reports: "You can transfer all important information from lucid dreams using no more than three letters in a word," [sleep expert Michael Raduga], who founded Phase Research Center in 2007 to study sleep, told Ars. "This level of optimization took a lot of time and intellectual resources." Remmyo consists of six sets of facial movements that can be detected by electromyography (EMG) sensors on the face. Slight electrical impulses that reach facial muscles make them capable of movement during sleep paralysis, and these are picked up by sensors and transferred to software that can type, vocalize, and translate Remmyo. Translation depends on which Remmyo letters are used by the sleeper and picked up by the software, which already has information from multiple dictionaries stored in its virtual brain. It can translate Remmyo into another language as it is being "spoken" by the sleeper. "We can digitally vocalize Remmyo or its translation in real time, which helps us to hear speech from lucid dreams," Raduga said.

For his initial experiment, Raduga used the sleep laboratory of the Neurological Clinic of Frankfurt University in Germany. His subjects had already learned Remmyo and were also trained to enter a state of lucid dreaming and signal that they were in that lucid state during REM sleep. While they were immersed in lucid dreams, EMG sensors on their faces sent information from electrical impulses to the translation software. The results were uncertain. Based on attempts to translate planned phrases, Remmyo turned out to be anywhere from 13 to 81 percent effective, and in the interview, Raduga said he faced skepticism about the effectiveness of the translation software during the peer review process of his study, which is now published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice. He still looks forward to making results more consistent by leveling up translation methods in the future. "The main problem is that it is hard to use only one muscle on your face to say something in Remmyo," said Raduga. "Unintentionally, people strain more than one muscle, and EMG sensors detect it all. Now we use only handwritten algorithms to overcome the problem, but we're going to use machine learning and AI to improve Remmyo decoding."
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'Sleep Language' Could Enable Communication During Lucid Dreams More

'Sleep Language' Could Enable Communication During Lucid Dreams

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  • From the article:

    Translation depends on which Remmyo letters are used by the sleeper and picked up by the software, which already has information from multiple dictionaries stored in its virtual brain.

    Virtual Brain??? WTF are they talking about â" is this the 1970s or something?

    The idea is interesting but there is no detail either in the linked article or the abstract or the paywalled journal article to tell us what this language is, or now one communicates using inky three letters.

    • I meant only three letters. I miss the preview feature and working quotation marks from the old Slashdot.

      • Re: Interesting idea, poor article (Score:5, Funny)

        by ArsenneLupin ( 766289 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @04:29AM (#63510467)

        I miss the preview feature and working quotation marks from the old Slashdot.

        Easy 4 step solution:
        1. Take you iPhone(tm) into your right hand
        2. Move your right hand backwards behind your shoulder
        3. quickly move your hand forward
        4. when your arm moves the quickest, release iPhone(tm)

        Bonus points for doing this when standing on a balcony, or facing a pond, or a wall

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          I can confirm this does resolve the issue with little to no negative impact. In fact performance may increase after applying this change.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Askmum ( 1038780 )
      So the face makes random expressions and from that letters are derived and those are translated and are 13 to 81 percent effective.

      Seems to me they made a nice random generator.

      • So the face makes random expressions and from that letters are derived and those are translated and are 13 to 81 percent effective.
        Seems to me they made a nice random generator.

        And I was hoping for a Remmyo++ release by next year, that would allow me to create objects within dreams, execute events within them, and have them return serialized data from the in-dream environment.

    • By slapping AI on their garage obsession.

      "The main problem is that it is hard to use only one muscle on your face to say something in Remmyo," said Raduga.
      "Unintentionally, people strain more than one muscle, and EMG sensors detect it all. Now we use only handwritten algorithms to overcome the problem, but we're going to use machine learning and AI to improve Remmyo decoding."

      Did I say garage? I meant garbage.

      The results were uncertain.
      Based on attempts to translate planned phrases, Remmyo turned out to be anywhere from 13 to 81 percent effective, and in the interview, Raduga said he faced skepticism about the effectiveness of the translation software during the peer review process of his study

      That's not uncertain. That's random. As in noise.
      As in if you're claiming any certainty to "effectiveness" between "13 to 81 percent" - you are a Texas sharpshooter [wikipedia.org] and thus a snake oil salesman.

      Besides, who will finance junk with such poor marketing. Remmyo? Should have went with AI upfront.
      Call it DreAIm or LucAId.
      Or ChatGPT-4-Sleepity. [youtube.com]
      Five. Sorry... FaiV.

      • Perhaps you should engage your brain a little bit.
        For some people the correctness is as low as 13%

        For others it is up to 81% - which is not bad at all.

  • On suggestion to improve the software could be to equip the software's virtual brain with frikin sharks with lasers attached on their heads and let the AI and Machine Learning algorithms aim them at the facial muscles that are not supposed to twitch in the first place.

  • How in the world does a person in deep sleep control his mind to communicate through his face muscles. UNless they mean that the muscles move automaticall as per the dreams - then that is plausible. But sleeper willingly communicating - seems weird.

    • How in the world does a person in deep sleep control his mind to communicate through his face muscles. UNless they mean that the muscles move automaticall as per the dreams - then that is plausible. But sleeper willingly communicating - seems weird.

      No idea but it sounds like somebody needs to tell them about chorded keyboards.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • It seems incredibly stupid - people already talk in their sleep.

      If a lucid dreamer can be taught to twitch their face using a specialised language, why not just teach them to talk from their dreams?

      • That's what this is doing. But talking in your sleep is not deep enough. We're talking twitching dog here. Your central nervous system paralyses you when you enter REM sleep. the brain is still sending the signals, but only the tiniest echo gets through. Lucid dreaming, you train yourself to be able to control the dream, and also aspects of the dream. Visualising your "home base" is a key fundamental, for example. So, when you visualise leaving your home base, putting on your communication mask and keying t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      When one has a lucid dream the dreamer is aware they are asleep and dreaming. Body awareness is usually part of it along with varying degrees of body paralysis.

      My philosophy of being skeptical of consensus has determined that everybody is usually right but I've also found exceptions and lucid dreaming is one of them. First you need to remember dreams which is challenging for me because I'm a very deep sleeper. A dream journal and interrupted sleep help. Logging whatever you remember from dreams each morning

      • Cool

  • I've had lucid dreams, and every time I am bored senseless after the first 5 minutes. "You can do anything you want!" Yeah, but YOU are doing it:

    You're not actually flying, you're creating a fake world below you. You can fly through an obstacle course but you have to MAKE the obstacle course.

    You're not getting busy with a model, you're pretending there's a model, and you know it.

    Anything else you want to do? I decided to work on some programming, but since you can't test/compile anything and you don't have

    • Each to their own. I've had some pretty amazing vivid lucid dreams.
      • How do you get over knowing it was just you alone in a dream? I can get pretty much the same effect closing my eyes. Or are you only semi-lucid, like your brain is still providing background processes?
        • I don't know all the technical or biological details, I just know that when I realise I'm dreaming, I can take control and do stuff like flying and it feels just like real flying (or how I'd imagine it to feel, I guess). It's a complete rush. Maybe you haven't had a proper lucid dream? It's definitely nothing like just closing your eyes and imagining. Everything just feels real, like it does in a dream. So real that even in a lucid dream I find my self questioning if it is in fact a dream or real.
          • That doesn't track for me. Like how punching in a dream never feels impactful or how running only kinda/sorta works. I've flown in dreams and in my lucid dreams and it "felt" the same, but in the lucid dream I could control my height perfectly, except I knew it was just a dream so it was boring. The cool part about flying in a dream is you subconsciously know that you're not supposed to be able to fly. It sounds more like you were only partially lucid. Once you know it's a dream and you can do anything, the

    • On the few occasions I've spontaneously had a lucid dream, it was fun. But I don't think I'd want to do it all the time. It's like those movies where you get to choose what happens next, which I've never been interested in. Just show me the damned movie. Likewise, just show me the damned dream. I'm supposed to be resting, not making an effort.

      • I may be misreading, but does that mean you don't feel a sense of agency in your non-lucid dreams? Like, I always feel able to make choices for myself as if I were whoever I am in the dream.

        • Good question. While I do feel some sense of agency in my normal dreams, it's usually severely constrained, so I'm mostly limited to being a passive observer with emotional reactions.

          Also, I can't think of any dreams I've had in which I'm anyone other than myself. My life circumstances may be different, but I'm pretty sure I'm always myself.

    • I think you're just not very good at it

    • Well, I've had some very interesting and informative dreams. My stringiest one was I had this ball, see, and it looked a bit like a volleyball, Wilson, but it was hard and smooth and dully lustrous. If I turned it this way, it would make everybody line up in alphabetical order, but if I turned it that way, they would organise themselves by height. And I saw words and figures and bits of code sort beaming out from the ball like smoke and telling people how to arrange themselves in the order we needed. And I

  • Communication while asleep? How long before this translates to "ads while sleeping"?

  • We need one of those machines on inception

  • ... to establish the habit of using the same nickname for your wife and girlfriends. That way, you don't get a swift kick in the ribs at night and your wife crying that you said "sweetheart" but she is "darling".

  • Wake me up when they figure out how to encourage people to communicate lucidly when they are not sleeping.

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