'I love you': the first phrase detected from dreams.

During lucid dreams, people can intentionally produce facial muscle activity that corresponds to specific spoken words. Four experienced lucid dreamers, in a laboratory, said the phrase "I love you" while awake and again while lucid dreaming. Electromyographic (EMG) recordings from facial and neck muscles showed that the "I" sound triggered distinctive activity in the submentalis area, while "you" did so in the orbicularis oris, both during wakefulness and during the dream. The patterns were observed in most cases, suggesting that only highly distinctive, EMG-signature phrases can be detected from dream vocalizations. This indicates the possibility of creating an artificial EMG language for real-time decoding during lucid dreams.

Study at a glance

Abstract

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. 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. 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. 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.