Slashdot Mirror
Manufacturing Dreams
New submitter geekgirl09 sends in a story from Wired about the U.S. Army's efforts to develop methods for digitally manufacturing dreams to soothe combat vets who suffer from PTSD. From the article:
"Fifty-two percent of combat veterans with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) reported having nightmares fairly often, according to the National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study. ... So the researchers will ask troops to take control of the 'creation of the customized healing imagery (therapeutic dreams) to counter the impact of nightmares,' according to a military contracting document. The hope is that these 'power dreams' can be watched from laptops and 'home training and 3-D goggles work to gradually enhance the strength of these new neurological images.'"
Inception Reference
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Your brain is dirty. Let me wash that for you.
There, isn't that better now?
And don't ask where the mud came from.
John
The modern western world has gotten itself into a fix where reality doesn't really matter anymore and thanks to our political overlords our money and the money of our kids are poured into the fix as fast as possible. It may be better if the muslins take over.
"Soldier, I'm recommending six-weeks of dreams about puppies."
. . . if the dreams have product placements.
"Hey, can you stop at that Walgreen's? Gotta pick up some Always Infinity(tm) pads, a Snuggie now-with-improved-fit, and case of refreshing Moxie."
"AGAIN?"
An A.I. connected to Remote Neural Monitoring is already capable of this. Normally, it is used to induce the exact opposite effect,
Can they make dreams for the downtrodden out there who will be locked out college - http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/10/24/1316228/ron-paul-wants-to-end-the-federal-student-loan-program - or those who will become the indentured servants to the rising upper elite class when their own dreams are crushed?
What about lucid dreaming? Is it a viable (and/or cheaper) option compared to these "therapeutic dreams"?
It seems to me that the best dreams would be those which can be experienced and directed as one wishes.
while they are asleep?
Why is it I suddenly want to buy a 3-pack?
Some of the most successful technologies are the ones adopted by the pornography industry.
I'd say that this one has real potential!
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
This reminds me of the Isaac Asimov story Dreaming is a Private Thing where dreams are manufactured and sold as one of the ultimate forms of entertainment. Instead of looking at some of the obvious implications that might spring to mind, Asimov (as he often did) looks instead at the lives of the people who produce the dreams that are then recorded for others to view, and what life might be like for such a person.
What the article talks about is, of course, very different then the story, but with advances in brain imaging and research it may one day be a possibility.
I thought MDMA was proven to be most effective for PTSD?
They'll get rid of that pesky conscience, too, while they're in there.
“During our conscious hours, most can hide what they have become,” according to a presentation delivered to the Uniformed Services Academy of Family Physicians, a nonprofit group.
What they've become?!? Shouldn't we address that instead? What do they mean, "what they've become?"
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Denise Milani! Hell, I'd pay for for the dreams to be created, nooooo problem :D
Suddenly, I'm at peace with all that shooting and ass-kicking violence.
Have gnu, will travel.
the entire project feels like a power dream.
Good people go to bed earlier.
How about we don't send people to war in the first place?
...to kill people without the side effects.
robo soldiers are not ready yet
Why see shades of gray,
why be a loner?
Try another Soma. SOMA!
Life's good,
shut up!
You can't handle the truth.
Sounds like this would technically be an AVE (Audio-visual entrainment) device.
Life is not for the lazy.
... I approve. It was not fun having my gf wake up in cold-sweats or yelling in her sleep. If something like this could allow her to have a restful night's sleep, I'm all for it!
Paprika reference.
Dr Chiba was a therapist, so it's relevant too!
They claim this isn't the sequel of Inception. But that movie wasn't at all what came to me. Source Code actually is. Though reading dreams was posted on Slashdot recently the whole interaction with the brain seems to be a terrain that is finally being discovered. Although I wonder, why the target isn't about removing bad dreams, by inducing the patient with beta blockers so while living the dream, the dream cannot be stored again.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
The proposition that one can create therapy for ones' PTSD presupposes a level of understanding that's not present for those that are suffering this dysfunction.
So where does the illusion of therapeutic fantasy arise, or is this just a naked attempt to find out how best to reward the people we send to suffer for the cause? Is this just an covert means by which to encourage soldiers construct self tailored virtual R&R environments in order to minimize out-of-theatre transport costs for warriors who need a break from the battlefield?
The best way to help soldiers is to keep them out of harm's way to begin with.
Getting past my own (non-military) nightmares required learning two key techniques: Remembering my nightmares (rather than mainly the feelings), and learning to create or control my dreams (AKA Lucid Dreaming).
In my own case, I had great trouble remembering much about the dreams themselves, generally awakening with only feelings of terror and maybe a snapshot of the last moments of the dream that occurred before I awoke. The terror itself (or recoiling from it) seemed to wall me off from the majority of the dream content.
One key for me to remembering my dreams was learning how to return to consciousness without 'falling into' the terror. Or, more accurately, to become able to work at saving the dream while simultaneously feeling terror. Just remembering the dream did much to lessen the terror: It became less of an unknown.
Quite often, upon falling asleep again, I'd immediately return to a nightmare. With time, I learned how to fall to sleep slower, to 'set the stage' in my mind for something I'd like to dream about (often the plot from a recent movie or book), then 'walk into the dream' as I gradually fell to sleep.
I know those descriptions are simplistic. I suspect each person needing such techniques will have their own wrinkles in how they acquire them.
The key for me was solid psychological support from a truly talented psychotherapist (not a psychologist or psychiatrist). The field of psychology has more crap in it than any other field I can think of, with the possible exception of politics. So much of the field is dominated by the DSM that few practitioners seem to know how best to use it, and instead seem to use it as a hammer, where every patient becomes a nail.
The most important underlying concept for me was neuroplasticity: Our brains are continually rewiring themselves (forming new memories is the most obvious example), and we can consciously affect, and even direct, key aspects of that ongoing process. We can literally change our brains, and thus our minds. Doing so requires dedicated learning combined with focused application.
Quite often, nightmares are based on 'known' memories, where instead of simply recalling them, we relive them. So the 'front door' to accessing the unconscious mind is to first work with the conscious mind. It isn't hard to find a particularly powerful memory that we tend to relive rather than merely recall. The problem is that the experience of reliving a memory creates a *new* memory of the event! The ever-efficient brain, rather than storing the event separately, instead emphasizes the existing memory, intensifying the emotional content. Making the next 'reliving' event even more intense.
I won't go into the process of 'de-intensifying' a memory, other than to say that this is a skill that can be built like any other, such as learning how to play an instrument or learning to juggle. Once learned, and learned well, it can operate at a reflexive level. This is when it becomes a tool useful for helping reduce then eliminate nightmares.
I'm certain there are many different paths leading to the same goal and result. I only know the one that worked for me, and I don't know if what I experienced is a general process or a unique result. What I do know is that it never would have happened if I had given up after the first dozen useless 'mental health professionals' and stopped seeking help. I had to kiss lots of psycho-frogs before I found a good one. A good one who took me off all meds, helped me turn my mind into a powerful tool of self-discovery and self-treatment, who helped me take a 360-degree view of my life rather than focusing only on the main problem.
I now have a very rich dream world I enjoy visiting almost every night. Though I did have to give up reading Steven King.
One final note: I'm taking the online Stanford AI class, and since it's been 25 years since I graduated college, I'm a bit rusty at absorbing the concepts and details. I am able to use lucid dreaming to explore the information in my sleep, awaking each morning with a better grasp of the material than I had the night before. And, since I love the material, my dreams are all good.
How bout old men not sending me to the middle of fsck'n nowhere to fight people who would much rather blow themselves up.
At least Washington LED his troops into battle, I think it's time to add that to the bill of rights. That would slow the bastards down.
I prefer to be anonymous, but i was never a coward. Look at what you have done.
Maybe it would be a better idea to leverage the bad dreams...which are, among other things, ways that we cope with the real world or things in it that we're "afraid" of. I would think that simply denying/blocking someone's ability to have the bad dreams could be worse. We need to learn how to work with how things work, rather than assume they're wrong and try to change them.
Sometimes we're able to process the bad dreams and move forward, sometimes that's not as easy as it sounds...especially for those with PTSD. Forcing someone to have good dreams sounds like giving them a kind-of Advil...it blocks the pain receptors (as I understand it) rather than fixing the actual problem.
Advil is OK for some things, but it won't fix a broken leg.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Can't wait for this to become affordable for regular home use
How about we stop fighting wars so people won't have to witness unspeakable horrors? Idealistic, I know. How about this one: Friends don't let friends join the military.
They'll call the project "The New American Dream".
How about not making nightmares that cause nightmares in the first place. But I'm just talking crazy.... Adam
Seems like we have come a long way. The nazis had the same issue with their soldiers being traumatised by their actions. Not having digital technology they tried to mitigate the amount of trauma experienced by the soldiers. This lead to mechanisation of the killing process, for example the use of gas chambers instead of firing squads. They tried to get other prisoners to bury the dead as well, or to shovel them into cremation ovens. This way those traumatised were in the next batch to be killed and the soldiers were spared. There may be a point where we want to say that the trauma is a sign that the soldiers are being pushed too far, and rather than seeking medicinal or mechanical solutions to the problem, perhaps we should look at wars we are engaged in and what our soldiers are being ordered to do.
Many citizens of western countries have had their brains covertly implanted with advanced neurotechnology. A large number are reporting that they are being tortured remotely. Symptoms included artificially-induced dreams in addition to involuntary limb movement, pain center stimulation, voices and images inserted into their consciousness, and other forms of "experimentation." For more information, please see Sweet Dreams (Electronically Forced Into Your Brain Wirelessly)
...don't sending them to hunt unicorns and non-existent WMDs?
Problem solved. Oh wait, since they are there, might as well exchange some oil for 'democracy'.
Not a single reference to Max Headroom? Come on, if not on /., where else?
#1 choice would be authentic wet dreams with the choice of partner(s).
...until I saw this part:
So you wake up from a nightmare, stick your 3D glasses on and immediately get assaulted with flying penises?
I was in Iraq during the surge in an area called "the triangle of death." I thought it was hyperbole until I got there. I'm still being treated for PTSD and I would love to try the dreaming machine. Can you throw in flying? I haven't flown in my dreams since I was a kid.
If there is no God then free will is an illusion.
"You just sit over there and relax while I project these thoughts into your mind, soldier."
we can have more needless wars?
I am still getting thrown from a desk in a building every night almost a year on.
I do not know how seeing bodies nightly is a good or purposeful thing.
We have a very effective and inexpensive solution right under our noses that are not being utilized because of our incredibly misguided politics. It's called medical marijuana and it can has been shown to completely erase dreams.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - "We're in the American Dream Business" - and of course, the current nightmares of toxic home-loans, mortgages collapses. F'ing pimping selling-out people's dreams to Wall St.
"You will Respawn in 10 Seconds"