::Inception: Science of Dreams, Where, What, When....!

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a dream snatcher. He's an industrial spy, who steals secrets when his victims are at their most defenceless: when they are asleep, and dreaming. But he has an even rarer ability, that of inception. He can plant an idea in someone's sleeping mind, and watch it grow and take root in reality. "The most resilient parasite is an idea," he says.

Inception is a complex sci-fi thriller that lies somewhere between a James Bond film and The Matrix.

Now lets explore the possibilities from a scientific viewpoint,

Possibility of Direct access to someone's dream......

In the movie, the dream-snatchers use a drug called somnacin and a dream machine to upload a scenario into someone's sleeping mind. One or more of them then go to sleep themselves, hooked up to the machine, and enter the target's dream.

This fictional dream machine is called a Portable Automated Somnacin Intra Venous (PASIV) Device.

A device does already exist that can effectively read someone's mind. A functional MRI scanner takes snapshots of brain activity, and then the software recreates images of what the subject was looking at.

The researchers say it has the potential one day be able to record someone's dream - without the mess and danger (or the fun) of actually sharing that dream.

Using drugs like somnacin to access a sleeping mind is not possible, but there are drugs that can drastically modulate our sleep. These include modafinal, which can promote continuous wakefulness, and new classes of sleeping pills that can deliver "super sleep".

Controlling your Dreams...

The easiest way to experience a lucid dream is to train yourself to ask, "Am I dreaming?" while you are asleep. Keen video gamers, probably because they focus on a single task for hours per day, are particularly good at lucid dreaming.

The dream team of Inception is highly trained at this, which may be why they are able to perform complex tasks - such as reading - which most normal lucid dreamers find difficult. Some of the characters in the movie have also militarised their dreamscapes, to protect themselves against the invasive dream snatchers.

Dreams Obeying the Laws of Physics and much more...

This is a fondly debated topic, and Inception has it both ways. Sometimes impossible things happen - in one dream Paris gets folded like a huge sheet of paper - and optical illusions become "real". The endless staircases created by M. C. Escher, for example, exist in Inceptiondreams thanks to a manipulation something like that occurring in 3D virtual environments.

However, the dreams follow some "real life" rules.

Function of Dreams...

Freud thought that dreams expressed our repressed desires. And so they do, sometimes, but much modern research suggests that dreams help in information processing and memory storage.

Dreams occur in both rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, and non-REM sleep. REM dreams are more story-like, with emotion and aggression, and non-REM dreams often involve friendly social interactions. People with depression often experience more REM sleep than non-depressed people.

Subjective Time pass in a Dream....

In Inception, dream time runs much slower than real time, and there is a scaling effect, such that if you dream within a dream, time passes even more slowly. So 5 minutes of real time equals 1 hour of dream time, a 5-minute dream inside a dream equals one week of second-level dream time, and so on.

This is perhaps the cleverest part of the movie, but though intuitively pleasing, there is little evidence for it. In fact there is some evidence that in lucid dreams, at least, the perception of time in similar to that when the dreamer is awake.

A more pressing question for researchers is what happens when our brain's time perception goes faulty. In fact, the illusion of time may be created by the brain itself, which is at least as much of a head-scratcher as the plot of Inception.

Further reading and Information courtesy: My brain, New Scientist, Gizmag, Gizmodo.

Images: Property of Warner Brothers.

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