9 Amazing Facts About Dreams

Why, Yes! You Can Be in Fiji by Midnight Tonight

You can try to control the content and stickiness of your dreams—if you believe the many new smartphone apps that are available. A recent tool, Sigmund, developed by Harvard and MIT graduate students, whisperingly repeats words that you pick out of a database (beach, flying, mermaid, queen) during your REM cycle (based on predictable sleep-wake times). Another app, Dream:ON uses the phone’s motion-detecting accelerometer to gauge when you’re in REM (you’ll be stick-still), at which point it kicks in with the sounds of your pre-programmed dream—walking in the woods or frolicking at the shore (as examples). No one’s saying app-influenced dreams are exactly like the movie “Inception”—not yet, anyway.