EP85: Brainwave-Sensing Technologies for Cognitive & Dream Research

 Dr. Cheng Qian is a neuroscientist specializing in pioneering human-computer interactive technology for dream exploration and interaction. His mission is to expand the applications of cutting-edge wearable EEG technology, originally developed for cognitive and sleep research purposes, into the field of dream studies. Dr. Qian shares insights on how accurate data from brainwave technology aids research.
 
Explore your lucid dreams like a pro with this new headband called Enchanted Wave, a brainwave-sensing technology for lucid dreaming. It is an at-home EEG reader and an app with features to help you get lucid!

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Transcript

Amina: [00:00:00] I started this podcast because I love talking about lucid dreams and dream work, and I want to get into research myself. So, you know, I find it quite fascinating what you do, but I've been a lucid dreamer since I was eight. So I'm quite experienced with lucid dreams. 

Dr. Qian: You said you, uh, you had a lucid dream since eight and a half.

And do you have, what's your frequency 

Amina: right now? It's like three to four times a week. Oh, okay. Frequency. Yeah. It's pretty high frequency for me. Um, I'm quite experienced with it and I have good dream control and doing tasks and things. So yeah, I'm always looking for ways that I can contribute to research because I know how hard it is to get lucid dreamers in the lab, get lucid and do work on that kind of stuff.

So the 

Dr. Qian: first step is how to get a lucid dreamer. The second step is how to build trust with them because some of them are not, are making claims that are actually not so reliable because I see the data all the time when they say something and it doesn't match up with the data I can say oh okay they're trying to impress me but it's not really what it [00:01:00] really happened.

Amina: So what what are you looking for in terms of your research? What are you working on right now? 

Dr. Qian: Oh, we have, we develop a brainwave sensing headband. So it's, uh, it was developed for research, cognitive research, and, you know, psychology, neuroscience, that kind of stuff. We had this developed for a long time, five years ago.

It was for the psychology professors and was released right before the COVID. So during the COVID and the research, all the, most of the research psychology, cause they involve human and this stuff. at a school. So we couldn't keep this product going because all the users are on freeze. So we had a, uh, a small lucid dreaming detour, you know, exploration for, we're using this, the headband can support sleep for the whole night.

And it's pretty comfortable. And, uh, we have, well, myself also have a decent lucid dreaming experiences and, um, not like you, you're, you're natural, but me, I [00:02:00] was more, uh, you know, learned and trained. So I started with some, uh, groups in the Reddit to talk about lucid dreaming and more people get interested.

And they tried our device and I look, I help them look at the data and can match up with their dream and the actual data measure from the brain. So that's how we did it for about two years during the pandemic. It was really long. It feels really long. 

Amina: Yeah. 

Dr. Qian: Yeah. And yeah, We got a lot of data from that.

And we, we, we also incorporated several popular lucid dream inducing method in the app. So there are simple ones that are complicated ones. And I'm sure for beginners, you don't want to, or it's challenging for you to memorize all the steps. How, what do you do? What, when, And we automated in the, uh, in the app and there's, um, there's audio cue to tell you what to do when, and the app will play certain sound or, or even flash the screen as a visual [00:03:00] stimulation.

And then at the same time, the headband can track. The progress that you fall into sleep and entering the dream. So, uh, also during the dream, there are several protocols can interact with your dream at different timing of the dream. You can play a sound or flash the screen or something like that. And the most advanced protocol we had.

is we allow the lucid dreamers to signal the outside world using eye movements. If you have read some of the research articles, there are experiments in the lab that allow the lucid dreamer to look in the dream world left, right, left, right, left, right. And very often they will correspond to your eye movement moving left, right, left, right.

Eye movements can be caught by the, uh, by the sensor on the forehead and then transfer into the mobile app and can recognize it by using some algorithm. So that way we allow a dreamer to communicate with the outside world. 

Amina: That's so fascinating. [00:04:00] I love that. Yeah, I was reading your website about enchanted wave and the headband seems super cool and efficient.

So props to you for coming up with that. I have a lot of questions for you about it. But first, I wanted to ask you on a personal note what I know there's a lot of uses for the headband. But what got you interested in lucid dreaming particularly? 

Dr. Qian: Well, my background by education was neuron science. So I always had this interest in neuron science, especially cognitive neuron science.

After the time, the movie Inception, a lot of people know it's about, there's a, you know, small elevation of talking about lucid dreaming or dreaming related topics. And I saw some of the articles and just, you know, based on my education. background, I wasn't really convinced that that's a real thing. I think it's more like a, you know, pseudoscience or, or, you know, folk science, but there was so much talking about it for some time.

I just thought of that topic during the day. And there was one night I had a lucid dream myself. So just all of a sudden I [00:05:00] realized, Oh, this is dream. And, uh, I could, on the first day, manipulate my dream contents, and I declared this as my kingdom, and I had some kind of superpower over in the dream. So, after I woke up, I realized, oh, okay, this is a genuine, very different moment in cognitive status.

That may open up a new window for research because most of the time when we do cognitive research, uh, your brain are working on many tasks, including controlling the body or at least communicating with the body. For a lot of special cognitive moments, such as a deep meditation or yoga, uh, So much claim that is, you know, not very normal, not very common in terms of regular, you know, scientific observations.

But if you want to verify them, it's really, really difficult to find the right person to replicate. It's almost impossible to repeat the results. So scientific value for some research that you cannot repeat diminishes a lot. But so for [00:06:00] lucid dreaming, Well, after some research myself, I had my first occasion, I read some articles and I realized this can be learned and trained.

I did learn and train myself and I found it's repeatable and then I thought this research can be repeated and this special moment that your brain has very minimal control or communication with the body give a special or very unique state that you can study the consciousness with the least interference from the, from the other perspective.

Amina: Lucid dreaming gives us such a good way to study different states of consciousness. It's quite fascinating when using the headband or studying brainwaves, how accurate is it in terms of like, when I do the signal in the lucid dream, that it's able to be picked up. 

Dr. Qian: The signal are accurate. However, it needs a algorithm to recognize a sleep stage.

That is a very complicated process. So long story short. Uh, we can do it, the recognition of the sleep stage pretty accurately. But to your [00:07:00] question, if someone were to, uh, signal the outside of world with eye movement, it takes some learning and practice. It's just like, You know, learning practice to enter lucid dream and to control your lucid dream, uh, control your own lucid dream and do certain things in the dream, it also takes some control.

And for many times, even myself get distracted, you know, I, I still get excited for even after several years. And I, I think I, I want to do this, I want to do that. And, you know, but when I actually in there, in the lucid dream, um, there's still something appearing in the dream that just get my attention, get me distracted.

Yeah. So it still takes some practice to actually do it, to signal to the outside world. 

Amina: Yeah, definitely. I can imagine. Um, you know, cause even as an experience. experience lucid dreamer, you know, I can't always have full dream control, or I'm not always able to do what I need to do. And then even so, if I am able to do it, I'm not sure that it would even pick [00:08:00] up on an EEG, but maybe it would.

I've never tried the headband myself, but it seems really cool. Is your goal for it mainly to target researchers or does it have a use for just the everyday person? 

Dr. Qian: Yeah, we are trying to expand the user group to everyday person. Um, I think the lucid dreamer is a good application. And it also personally is, I have a lot of curiosity in this field.

So I would like to help people like me who has interest in lucid dreaming or dreaming explorations and uses and see their own data. And we have some educational material on the website. To help people, to help regular people who, uh, who doesn't have a EEG background or a neuroscience background to understand what is what and, you know, why they're there.

So, yeah, we are trying to make this more friendly for regular people without, you know, uh, non researchers. It's a dream and, and also for some awake functions as well. 

Amina: That's great. [00:09:00] I think it has a lot of uses as well. And on the research side of things, what type of research projects and discoveries have been made using this technology?

Dr. Qian: Uh, we have researchers using this for monitor the cognitive stage change dynamics during meditation, during sports exercise. And even doing e gaming, video play, video game play. So, uh, also, uh, study of a drug effectiveness, uh, on certain population. So it's pretty, uh, diverse. 

Amina: When it comes to lucid dreaming, how can having, uh, your brainwave data give us information about what's going on in the brain while we're lucid dreaming?

Dr. Qian: Well, the brainwave data can tell that you're dreaming because when you dream, your brain is pretty active. So the. For the active one, the beta, especially the high beta and the gamma band will be, uh, very bright, almost like you're awake. So especially when I'm thinking [00:10:00] and the band is very bright so you can recognize them as a dream.

Um, there are some researchers claim they can tell this is a lucid dream or not, but there aren't enough data to support or enough observations to support a solid Conclusion that is commercially ready. And when I say commercially ready, I mean, it's usually if you make a product, it has to be accurate for 90 percent of the case or 80 percent of the case, not comparing to research.

You just find a significance statistically. So I'll say. It will be pretty reliable to tell that you're in the dream, but it will be not very reliable at this technology or just any technology at this moment to tell that you are in the lucid dream reliably. 

Amina: Yeah, understandable. Um, I imagine that's why, you know, researchers will rely on the signaling response from the lucid dreamer from within the dream to indicate that they, you know, were in the dream or the, them waking up and saying, Oh yeah, I was just in a lucid dream.

You [00:11:00] know, I can see how it gets complicated with research. What are you looking to see in the future in terms of lucid dreaming research? Is there anything that you would like to know about lucid dreaming or that you're hoping to see? 

Dr. Qian: Well, I would like to see more advanced, uh, lucid dreaming research.

The research was kind of a lag behind was mostly because It was difficult to measure the brain activity, or difficult to get subjective measure of the cognitive states overall. Um, you know, most of the lucid dream study you have to do in the lab, uh, you have to wear EEG cap with wires and, you know, traditional EEG.

But with the verbal, uh, approach that we have, it is possible, you know, you do this at home, you share with your friends, or you just do it for, you know, study just for yourself. Uh, or collaborate with some researchers out there who has the research mind and knowledge, but not enough or not appropriate, [00:12:00] um, uh, dreamers.

So all of these can contribute to a faster study. of lucid dream and a dream and a cognitive, uh, neuroscience overall. 

Amina: Yeah, that's wonderful. So in your lab, um, as you're developing this technology, are you also doing studies with it yourself? 

Dr. Qian: Uh, yeah, my, I have the most data from myself. Yes. 

Amina: Oh, nice. 

Dr. Qian: I was learning this for Every night for like two years when I was doing the lucid dream study, cause I, I can lose a dream.

I know which moment when I wake up, I can tap on my app and just make a note that I had a dream. So second morning I can look at my data and I can recognize each events down to a second, you know, a new scene appeared. I turned my head, I can see my eye movement signal from the app. So I can call it from a dream, my dream log.

event to the EEG signal. So I have a lot of data for myself [00:13:00] and we have several, a lot of data from the volunteer participants as well. Now there's several labs in U. S., well, there's only a very small number of several labs in the U. S. and in Europe that studies, uh, leucogen. Well, the total number of labs that study leucogen is quite small.

So you said you have a community, where you join a community, something like that? 

Amina: Yeah, I have my own communities online. I make videos and do content about lucid dreaming to beginners and also to advance lucid dreamers. So I do like, you know, dream groups and things like that. Because yeah, I love teaching about it.

I think it's really just important work. 

Dr. Qian: Yeah, sounds very good. Sounds very interesting. When you graduate, have you got your master's or you will get your master's? 

Amina: No, I finished my master's already. Um, and so my next step is probably going to do a PhD, but I haven't started yet. I'm still planning it out.

Dr. Qian: Oh, okay. 

Amina: So the other thing I wanted to ask you too, [00:14:00] because you mentioned you were at first maybe more skeptical about lucid dreaming, um, which I noticed happens a lot in the neuroscience Why do you think that is that a lot of people don't understand lucid dreaming or have an interest in it or maybe they still see it as like a spiritual thing instead of something that can be studied academically?

Dr. Qian: There are two reasons. For one, um, there has been a lot of, uh, the dream has been studied, uh, or, or kind of defined or people have some common sense. Even in the research world, the way they, how they look at dream, and they think, you know, certain neuron groups are activated, but certain neuron groups are turned off.

So that's the reason that you are, most people don't know that you're dreaming because certain, uh, neuron group that are in charge of self awareness, they are off in the dream, biologically. That's one reason. Another reason is [00:15:00] the lab that's doing this research. The way they identify or define a subject or participant is in lucid dream is not very completely defensive or, or, or weakless, um, sorry, I, I don't know the proper word for that.

If there's a researcher. want to say your design has a flaw because you rely on a PSG to define a lucid, to define a dream or not. PSG itself is not 100%. PSG is mostly, um, most people think it's a 70 percent accurate. And even with a real person making the corrections, it's maybe 90 percent accurate. And so that's a parent Uh, you know, design flaw in the, in the identity, [00:16:00] in the identification part of a dream.

So if you say, if the researcher saying, okay, um, I have this participant signal me left, right, left, right from a dream, um, the other researcher would argue, look, Your participant just had a macro, uh, micro awake, and she, you know, this person woke up for several seconds, signaled you, and fell back to sleep.

And that is almost impossible for PSG to detect to start with because PSG using a 30 second framework and time frame, uh, which called epoch. So that will be a very difficult question to answer in the, in the conference that we went to together or that you're going together. I doubt if there was be someone really, you know, harshly [00:17:00] challenging them in phase during the, during the presentation.

But For regular researchers, you know, studying dream, when they see publication like that, they will have this question in mind. Um, they don't bother to ask, but they will not be impressed or by being, by convinced by reading this paper, this is a confirmed lucid dreamer. And, uh, just the fact that lucid dreaming is still a rare phenomenal, unless someone like me, you really had it and, you know, cleared my doubt, cleared my knowledge on this.

It would be hard for someone to actually believe, for some researcher to believe. One small note on that also, a lot of the discussion of lucid dreaming are mixed up with, you know, out of body experience, telepathy, those kind of topics. which are very, very, you know, um, against the, uh, the, the common scientific societies, uh, uh, knowledge.

That's why, you know, putting this lucid dream a little, you [00:18:00] know, uh, glorious sticker on it. 

Amina: Yeah. You know, there's so many. Skeptics out there about what it means to be in a lucid dream. And especially if people have never experienced it, I feel like experiencing it firsthand can really give you an idea of what it means to be lucid.

Um, how valuable are lucid dreamers reports in the research? Like if you have data saying that I signaled left, right. And in addition to that, you have my report saying, yeah, I was in a dream when I did that and I was lucid inside the dream, I mean, is that valued at all? I mean, I guess people could lie, 

Dr. Qian: but it's valuable.

However, it will be, it will need to be verified with the data. Like I have to, you know, I have my, our participant claiming that. And when I look at the data, I know, Oh, look, he, this person has alpha wave, he's already awake. Um, even for a few seconds, that is not a detectable or not easily detectable, uh, from a PST, which using the epoch of 30 seconds, my device has.

Uh, very fine. [00:19:00] Um, time resolution. Uh, if I look at the data, I can zoom in, zoom out on the time domain. I can see appearance of alpha, which is indication of, uh, you know, even very brief awake, or there's no alpha, there's a continuous distribution of beta and gamma, which indicate this person has been in the sleep all the time, except a few minutes.

Eye movements appeared that is more a verified continuous stream. So I will say self claim is one way to trigger this study more or easier because I can match up over the time. Once this person told me I had a dream around that time, I woke up, I tap on the phone, I made a note, I made a note. That's a good trigger for me to go back and look at the data, but without a data confirmation, I would not.

I'm not, uh, skeptical, but I'm just a [00:20:00] trained with a lot of research, uh, uh, experience to not to believe until I see. 

Amina: Yeah, definitely. It's important to have the data to back it up. I mean, if you want to publish it, so it makes complete sense. And so from your understanding, can you only lucid dream during REM sleep or can you lucid dream outside of REM sleep?

Dr. Qian: Uh, well, that depends on how you define lucid dream. Before you fall asleep, there's a, uh, a few minutes period that you had a hallucination. It's really called hypnagogic, hypnagogia. And some people tend, you know, want to include them as a lucid dreaming concept. You know, since lucid dreaming doesn't have a clear definition, um, so it's a debatable statement.

But I would rather. Separate them, you know, differently. One is, uh, hypno, hypnogogic, halluc hallucination. The other one that, that appears in the, in the REM sleep. That is more lucid dream. There are possibilities that you have dream [00:21:00] during a non REM, uh, stage after sleep. According to most of the studies, those dreams tend to be non story like, uh, less visual, maybe strong emotion or not, but doesn't seem to be an immersive experience type of dream.

So, I wouldn't I would say the chance that lucid dream appears in those states would be very small. I cannot make any conclusion because we have no data, but just from the, from the logic, from the knowledge perspective, I would say most likely if you are a lucid dreamer, if you are trained yourself as a regular, common, uh, lucid dreamer using a very common, uh, method we see online, we see on the books.

And your dream would be your, your lucid dream will be in the REM phase. 

Amina: Yeah, it makes sense. This is why I've been wanting to study it myself, because I want to at least get a sleep tracker so I can know when I'm in REM and compare it to the times I had my dreams. I think it's [00:22:00] important data to have. So yeah, that's interesting.

And so the sound cues that help people become lucid, how are we able to hear things while we're dreaming and how does that induce lucidity? 

Dr. Qian: That is a very, uh, good point, and it's very confusing. I, I hope you get a chance if, since you have a podcast, I hope you get a chance to clear some of the confusions for the people out there.

That's a common belief many people had because of some of the earlier startup, uh, Kickstarter product. People believe if you are in the dream, you hear a song, you can realize you're in the sun, you see something, you can realize you're, you're in the dream. It is not true for most of the case. Because you're from biology from the revolution, your brain are trained to wake up easily.

If there is a significant interference by sound or by By visual true. I mean, it's not all the time. It is. Depends on you, depends on each person. There's a huge personal vari variation. I can tell [00:23:00] from the users. We had the chance that someone hear a sound or see a in see a light. During a dream that triggers a lucidity in the dream, uh, without waking up, the chance is low.

So by statistics, The chance that it is successful is, is not, not very promising. It could happen for some people, for some people who can, I think there's, um, there's a dependency on age, also dependency if you are a good sleeper or not. We have, uh, we have found several factors that are related, but because of the data size, it's not, large enough, I cannot say there's, you know, a significant observation based on that, but it seems to be a lot of, uh, there's a correlation with age with a good sleeper or not that can make you, or, you know, make someone trigger a lucidity in a dream or not.

But I will say for regular person who, who is [00:24:00] not qualified for that, or who is not, who, who's a brain or body condition is not optimized for that mechanism. The best chance are still the popular, uh, lucid dream induction method to getting the lucidity. There are several ones, um, from our empirical testing, I can tell you it's more, uh, more effective.

The not and don't trust the YouTube, the YouTube. I mean, I don't say they're all wrong, but the YouTube is so mixed and there are so many people claim or making false claims make exaggerations and disrupting people's trust on on on this topic. 

Amina: Yeah, it's important to, you know, have real information out there that people can rely on.

I hear, what about binaural beats? How effective is that at altering your brain waves to get into a state of mind easier for lucid dreaming? 

Dr. Qian: Very interesting topic. Uh, we had a group, uh, we have a research group, uh, we're working with, we're [00:25:00] working on binaural beats. That's a very complicated topic. Um, first of all, binaural beats are not very well studied in the research world.

Uh, if you look, look at papers, binaural beats, the mechanism, it's induce a artificial swinging, uh, sensation building the brain. And there are several other mechanisms can deliver similar result, which make binaural beats more complex. One of the options, but not a magical, not a womb or, or something. Okay, so essentially the mechanism is to trigger a synchronization using an external frequency, hopefully to trigger a synchronization of your brain activity because your brain neuron group, they're also working in certain frequencies.

But if you have some basic scientific training or physics training, you will know if a external stimuli, uh, trigger a internal [00:26:00] object. There's a common law that mandates that the, the triggering frequency works, that is very close to the intrinsic frequency of that object to be able to drive it. uh, stronger.

You think of a, of a swing. So if you push a swing, you have to push the swing according to the swing's internal frequency, internal pace, to make the swing go up and down harder. If you push the swing at a totally different, uh, frequency, it won't work at all. So binaural beats is like the pushing force.

You are, you know, adding 800 hertz or whatever hurts on your brain. So if it happens, to be in the same frequency as a neuron group that is working as a trigger for your consciousness. It may work just by chance. But I will say you are taking the chance, or this kind of approach is taking the chance. Or [00:27:00] better term to say, okay, it will work for some people if your frequency is a matching up with the external frequency that you pick from a binaural beats or from a regular beat or from any frequency driving, uh, or any music, any sound source with a certain frequency.

So it may work. I will not say it won't, but it's by chance. The chance is not random, the chance is having to match up with the intrinsic frequency of the neuron group that is in control of your consciousness in the brain. And also assuming, because the audio processing has two pathways, one is if the neuron pathway fits into the auditory processing portion, you will hear it.

If the auditory stimuli One through the other pathway is, which is the, uh, the arousal one that will wake you up fast [00:28:00] before you can hear it or you can recognize. So the binaural beats works depends on first, if you wake up or not. Second, if you, if it match up with your, your frequency or not. 

Amina: Yeah, it makes sense.

Thank you for that explanation. And I also noticed like back to what you said about YouTube, it's hard to find true binaural beats online as well that actually have the oscillating frequencies and they're not just sounds playing. So there's a lot of factors in it for sure. I'm excited to see where the research goes in the future.

I think there's a lot of work to be done in terms of researching this kind of stuff. 

Dr. Qian: The website you have is, uh, it's in China with our official website, right? 

Amina: Yes. 

Dr. Qian: Okay. So we actually have a different website for, for lucid dreamers or for dream explorer, uh, users. Uh, I can send you that. And that is probably a better explanation of our technology for the dreaming application.

We give you the discount because you are a lucid dreamer. Uh, we are always having a discount for lucid dreamers and [00:29:00] you're in the society or helping the society. We're more happy to give you a higher discount for, for just to try it out, to explore. So once you have a headband, you can try it. And if you have any problem, I can help you look at data and can help you, you know, guide what to do next, how to do it better.

Great. 

Amina: Thank you so much. Yeah, that would be great. I mean, I'll definitely support and pay whatever price I need to. Um, I definitely am excited to try it out and see what kind of data I can get. 

Dr. Qian: Okay. Sounds great. And thank you for your contribution of the dream system. This is a field that deserves more effort and more people, more resource.

Amina: Yes, I agree. So thank you so much as well for everything you've done. I'm excited to see what comes out of it. 

Dr. Qian: Okay.