‘I love you’: the first phrase detected from dreams

Abstract

Objective Many people have dreams nightly and some maintain consciousness during dreams. Such dreams are referred to as lucid dreams (LD). During dreams, our speech correlates with facial muscle activity, which is hard to decode, but LD could solve this problem. The primary hypothesis of this study was that the facial muscles electric activity during LD corresponds to specific sounds. Understanding this connection could help decode dream speech in the future. Material and Methods Under laboratory conditions, four LD practitioners were asked to say “ I love you ”, a phrase with a distinctive electromyographic (EMG) signature. They did this before falling asleep and then again after becoming conscious during a dream. Their facial and neck EMG was recorded in four areas. Results All four volunteers accomplished the goal at least once. The patterns associated with the “ I love you ” phrase were observed in most cases, both during wakefulness and LD. Specifically, the “ I ” triggered distinctive phasic activity in the submentalis area most of the time, while “ you ” did the same in the orbicularis oris . Discussion This study highlights the possibility of detecting only specific and highly EMG distinctive phrases from dreams because vocalization also involves a tong and vocal apparatus. The most interesting consequence of the present results is that they indicate the possibility of creating an artificial EMG language that could be instantly decoded in reality and used during LD.

Two-way control of a virtual avatar from lucid dreams

“…While in LDs, people can use their breath or muscles to send signals through EMG sensors and transfer whole words in Morse code (LaBerge et al, 1981). EMG sensors can also help decode speech in LDs because it has the same patterns as vocalizations in wakefulness (Raduga, 2022). EEG can also be intentionally affected in LDs (Erlacher et al, 2003), as can the facial muscles responsible for emotions (Konkoly et al, 2021).…”

Detecting Lucid Dreams by Electroencephalography and Eyebrow Movements

“… 37 This PACMs method is effective when studies require many cords and sensors besides PSG. 38 However, the main problem with this method is that it may be hard to differentiate genuine muscle atonia from deep relaxation or the N3 stage of non-REM sleep.…”

Unmuting lucid dreams: Speech decoding and vocalization in real time.

“…Such findings are important regarding the topic of the present study, as since the 1970s, facial EMG activity has also been associated with speech in dreams (McGuigan & Tanner, 1971; Oldis, 2017; Shimizu & Inoue, 1986). Moreover, in 2021, it was shown that the phrase I love you vocalized in LDs had the same facial EMG pattern as real-life vocalization (Raduga, 2022a).…”

“…Second, all EMG speech recognition studies have focused on a few specific languages, which could increase the error rate among nonnative speakers. According to the abovementioned study on speech recognition for the phrase I love you in LDs, a constructed language based only on EMG distinctive sounds could help to unmute people in LDs, as the words could be automatically decoded in reality (Raduga, 2022a).…”