thePULSESo Long Nightmares, Hello Sweet Dreams: New iPhone App Lets You Design Your Dreams
By Steph Moore
Ever wish you could plan out what (or whom) you’d dream about at night? Well, over 100 iPhone users in Cambridge are, thanks to Harvard grad student Daniel Nadler , doing just that ~ programming their dreams.
Nadler developed Sigmund, an app that is both a standard alarm clock and a dream controlling machine. It allows you to select up to five words you’d like incorporate into your dreams and then has you enter information about your sleep schedule. Before heading to bed, just place the phone about four feet away, and during your REM cycles it will repeat the words you selected.
Nadler developed Sigmund with the help of Harvard alum Yuhki Yamashita and Doug Feigelson, an MIT student who’s programmed in more than 1,000 pre-recorded words, according to the Harvard Crimson. While Nadler acknowledges that some words are more powerful than others ~ like “beach,” “restaurants,” and “girlfriend” ~ others have used the app and said it’s worked.
One student told the Crimson, “I once put in ‘running, mountains, trees, lake’ and dreamt I was running on a trail in the East Sierras.”
Sigmund costs 99 cents, but hey, if you can have Rob Pattinson, a pina colada, and a pair of Louboutins for under a dollar, sounds like a pretty good deal to me!
