4 min read
A neurotechnology startup’s claim that two people have shared a dream by transmitting a word from one sleeping person’s mind into another’s. The news has undoubtedly ignited both fascination and skepticism across the startup world.
California-based REMspace says it conducted an experiment involving lucid dreamers as they entered rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the phase associated with vivid dreams and heightened neural activity. Lucid dreamers are individuals who either practice or get induced in a state of sleep where they are aware that they are dreaming while the dream is still occurring.
According to the company, one participant heard a randomly selected word played through headphones during REM sleep and was instructed to verbally repeated it inside the dream. Minutes later, a second dreamer independently recognized the same word in their own dream experience. The company describes this as dream-to-dream communication.
Just over a year ago, the startup shared this video as a precursor to expect what is to come:
However, this claim is not yet independently verified. If validated, such a result would represent a dramatic leap for brain computer interface research, combining EEG monitoring, sensory cueing, and algorithmic interpretation of sleep state neural signals.
However, while decades of research confirm that external stimuli such as sounds, smells, or light pulses can influence dream content, there is no established scientific evidence that specific semantic information can be transferred between two sleeping brains.
Peer reviewed research from institutions including Northwestern University, MIT, and the Max Planck Institute has shown that lucid dreamers can respond to external prompts with simple signals, such as eye movements or facial muscle contractions, while remaining asleep. In a widely cited 2021 study published in Current Biology, researchers demonstrated two way communication between awake scientists and dreaming participants using yes or no questions. Crucially, however, the information flow in those experiments was unidirectional and externally driven, not shared between dreamers.
Neuroscientists stress that REMspace’s claim lacks independent replication and has not been published in a peer reviewed journal, a foundational requirement for scientific credibility.
Professor David Melcher of NYU Abu Dhabi has noted that while EEG and related tools can detect broad neural states such as sleep phases or attention shifts, they cannot reliably decode language, meaning, or internally generated dream content.
“There are some studies that suggest that at some (but not all) stages of sleep, hearing a sound or word can activate the brain regions processing sounds,” Professor Melcher says. “You would need to detect what sleep stage they are in (EEG plus eye movement, cardiac and respiratory measures), then have some way of decoding their brain activity.”
“I imagine that people would find it interesting to dream together, but it is not clear if there are any other benefits other than it potentially being fun,” he added.
Lucid dreaming itself presents another constraint. Large scale sleep studies suggest that spontaneous lucidity occurs infrequently and is highly variable across individuals. Inducing it reliably in laboratory settings often requires extensive participant training, sleep disruption protocols, or pharmacological aids, making controlled experimentation difficult and costly.
Professor Melcher echoes same beliefs:
“The neuroscience equipment is costly, but also to run these studies takes months of time from trained neuroscientists.”
Dr Bobby Jose, a neurosurgery specialist, has emphasized that dream content is distributed across complex neural networks rather than localized language centers.
“It is not possible to decode specific information from dreams [as there is] a lot of electrical activity going on [in the brain during sleep], [current tools cannot] decode and decipher what a person is thinking… Such technology would be a powerful tool to intrude into a person’s intimate privacy and this may not be ethical”.
Claims of dream sharing also evoke historical concepts such as dream telepathy, explored in parapsychology during the mid 20th century. These experiments, many conducted at institutions like the Maimonides Medical Center in the 1960s, failed to produce results that withstood replication or modern statistical scrutiny and are widely regarded as scientifically inconclusive.
While dream research is advancing rapidly, the notion of reliable, semantic dream to dream communication lies well beyond current technological and biological understanding.
REMspace itself positions its work as part of a broader ambition to explore human consciousness during sleep. The startup was founded by researchers and technologists interested in lucid dreaming, sleep augmentation, and wearable neurotechnology, initially focusing on tools to stabilize lucidity and enable structured dream recall.
Public statements from the company suggest its long term vision includes therapeutic applications, creative collaboration, and new forms of human communication, though critics note that such goals remain speculative.
