Research
Personal Robots

Building intelligent personified technologies that collaborate with people to help them learn, thrive, and flourish.
Archived
Project Research

A Dream Hotel with Carsten Höller

We are working with MIT CAST Visiting Artist Carsten Höller to build prototypes for a Dream Hotel museum exhibition which will translate ex…
Archived
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Life with AI

Life with AI | Designing the future of smart systems to improve the human experience
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Connected Mind + Body

Connected Mind + Body | Revolutionizing the future of mental and physical wellbeing
Research
Fluid Interfaces

Designing Systems for Cognitive Support
Project Research

Theme | Health & Wellbeing

We develop systems that support health and wellbeing, with a special focus on mental health. We design, study and apply technologies s…
Research
Affective Computing

Advancing human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion
Project Research

Theme | Sleep + Dream Engineering

We  build technologies that interface with the sleeping mind. We track different sleep-stages using brain activity, muscle tensio…
Project Research

HelioZZZ: a smart (material) sleep mask

HelioZZZ is an opacity changing eye mask that wakes you up with natural sunlight when you want it. The mask warms your eyes to help you fal…
Article Research

Inside your dreamscape

Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation.
Article Research

Make Magazine: Make Your Own Dream Incubator

First things first. Make sure you have your PCB, solder, soldering iron, flux pen, and electronic components ready to go.
Publication Research

ACM Demo Hour: Dormio

Chang Hee Lee, Dan Lockton, David Verweij, David Kirk, Kay Rogage, Abigail Durrant, Aubree Ball, Audrey Desjardins, Adam Haar Horowitz, Ishaan Grover, Pedro Reynolds-Cuellar, Oscar Rosello, Tomas Vega, Abhinandan Jain, Cynthia Breazeal, and Pattie Maes. 2018. Demo hour. Interactions 25, 6 (October 2018), 10-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3279993
Publication Research

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

Haar Horowitz, Adam, Ishaan Grover, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Cynthia Breazeal, and Pattie Maes. "Dormio: Interfacing with dreams." In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-10. 2018.
Post Research

Dreaming and Creativity

We investigated how guiding dreaming at sleep onset could enhance creativity.
Thesis Research

Incubating Dreams: Awakening Creativity

Haar Horowitz, Adam. "Incubating Dreams: Awakening Creativity." Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab. August 2019.
Article Research

That moment when you’re nodding off is a sweet spot for creativity

A new study finds people are more creative after waking from the earliest stage of sleep, especially when guided to dream about a topic.
Article Research

Here's how to use dreams for creative inspiration

Researchers from the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group and Harvard Medical School find that brief naps appear to enhance creativity.
Article Research

Quick catnaps may spark creativity

The NIH reports on research from the Fluid Interfaces group and Harvard Medical School investigating the effect of naps on creativity.
Article Research

Devices to Help You Sleep, Robotic Boots and Other Technologies That Will Change Your Health

Fluid Interfaces head Pattie Maes and five other experts talk about emerging health and wellness technologies.
Article Research

Neuroscientists warn advertisers are trying to 'weaponize sleep' by plugging into your dreams

“The potential for misuse of these technologies is as ominous as it is obvious.”
Publication Research

Sleep Deficiency Is Associated with Higher Next-Day Generalized Tonic-Clonic Seizure Risk

B. Zhang, W. V. Chen, G. Regalia, D. M. Goldenholz, and R. W. Picard, “Sleep deficiency is associated with higher next-day generalized tonic-clonic seizure risk”, in American Epilepsy Society 2023 Annual Meeting, 2023.
Article Research

"Dream glove" boosts creativity during sleep

In a new study, researchers from the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group & Harvard Medical School find that brief naps can enhance creativity
Article Research

Want to be more creative? Try dream-hacking while you sleep

The Washington Post reports on research from the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group & Harvard Medical School that naps could aid creativity.
Publication Research

Improving Memory via Automated Targeted Memory Reactivation during Sleep

Whitmore, N. W., Harris, J. C., Kovach, T. & Paller, K. A. Improving Memory via Automated Targeted Memory Reactivation during Sleep. Journal of Sleep Research 2022.06.28.497977 (2022) doi:10.1101/2022.06.28.497977.
Article Research

Behind the veil of hypnagogic sleep

Media Lab postdoc Adam Haar Horowitz discusses using “dream engineering” techniques to give people more control over their dreams.
Publication Research

Fascia Ecosystem: A Step Forward in Sleep Engineering and Research

Bernal, Guillermo, Malika Chhibber, Mradul Bhatnagar, Urvil Jivani, Nelson Hidalgo, Anthony Levasseur, and Pattie Maes. 2023. Fascia Ecosystem: A Step Forward in Sleep Engineering and Research. 45th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’23), no. Sydney Australia, (July )
Publication Research

Pioneering Remote Sleep Research: A Comparative Study of Sleep Stage Parameters in Diverse Datasets for Enhanced Interventions.

Bernal, Guillermo, Malika Chhibber, Mradul Bhatnagar, Urvil Jivani, Nelson Hidalgo, Anthony Levasseur, and Pattie Maes. Pioneering Remote Sleep Research: A Comparative Study of Sleep Stage Parameters in Diverse Datasets for Enhanced Interventions. SLEEP 2023, the 37th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC (APSS), June 6, 2023.
Publication Research

Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance

Horowitz*, A.H., Esfahany*, K., Gálvez, T.V. et al. Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance. Sci Rep 13, 7319 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31361-w
Project Research

Sleep and Epilepsy: Demystifying the thousand-year-long conundrum

According to WHO, epilepsy is the fourth most common neurological disease globally. CDC statistics show that 1 in 26 individuals in the U.S…
Project Research

SleepStim

SleepStim is a framework for automatically recording sleep physiology  and presenting sensory stimuli in sleep, using consumer smartph…
Archived
Project Research

Real-time Smartphone-based Sleep Staging using 1-Channel EEG and Machine Learning

Automatic and real-time sleep scoring is necessary to develop user interfaces that trigger stimuli in specific sleep stages. Howe…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Masca

InspirationDreams are fascinating personally, therapeutically, and scientifically. Who hasn't woken up in the morning and wondered how they…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Cocoon: Speculative Dream Engineering

Cocoon is our vision of a programmable dream machine from the future. This device would be enabled by the synthesis of many devices under d…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Essence Wearables: Biometric Olfactory Interfaces for Day and Night

Human-computer interaction (HCI) has traditionally focused on designing and investigating interfaces that provide explicit visual, auditory…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Cyber Key to Dreams

This project is a pipeline to algorithmically generate visuals of dreams collected from large groups during the COVID pandemic. Dreams…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Fascia Ecosystem: A Step Forward in Sleep Engineering and Research

Abstract— Millions suffer from sleep disorders, and sleep clinics and research institutions seek improved sleep study methods. This paper p…
Archived
Project Research

Dive

Dive is a project to explore and induce lucid dreams using mobile devices.Lucid dreams are dreams in which  you are aware that you're …
Archived
Project Research

Toy Stories

A custom circuit board is embedded into robotic toys which makes them come alive when a sleeper begins to dream. As you slip into REM sleep…
Archived
Project Research

Targeted Dream Incubation

Targeted dream incubation (TDI) is a methodology for guiding (or “incubating”) dreams towards specific themes. Please read the FAQ below to…
Project Research

Sleep++

Sleep++ aims to improve sleep quality by stimulating the brain to enter deep sleep. Currently, insufficient and poor quality sleep represen…
Project Research

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

InspirationSleep is a forgotten country of the mind. A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a thir…
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Cultivating Creativity

Cultivating Creativity | Catalyzing a global movement enabling everyone to unlock and unleash their individual and collective creativity
Research
Poetic Justice

Exploring new forms of social justice through art