portrayed his leader as somewhat of a tough man. but they showed pictures of him as a child. that's their leader. ♪ >> it may sound like something from a si fi movie but now an app for that. what you have to gain from dream control.

>> sometimes i feel like i'm the forest gum p of dreaming , some mornings i make up and where is that coming from. >> it is invading the dreams and making sure you eat shrimp. our work, it is invading my dream. last week i thought i was on assignment in translavania. speaking of being aware of this, there is a movie that came out saying... then we have paul saying... lisa, this is for us, to improve

the dreams. >> sometimes dreams are so random and other times they make sense. it is interesting to actually decide what you are going to dream, use the dreams to help problem solve and deal with the night terrors and depression. research moving in that direction, but one doctor is saying he's created an app with the touch button controls over the dream, called dream on. 40 sound scapes play throughout the sleep cycle and impacting the last dream. the sounds are mimicking the environments in your mind are a dream world to explore. travel through the fields, rain forests and night of the zombies. but does it really work? there is a stud yes revealing the dream on is effective in

altering the last dream of the night. what does that really mean for you? it is truly a recipe for the sweet dreams. we have guests to discuss this. we have creator of the dream on app, richard, he's author, the latest book includes the research on the effect fiveness of the app. joining us in the studio, professor of psychology at harvard and the dreaming and problem solving. and skype is ryan herd, author and founder of a website. it is i will illusive dreamer. the book is called dream like a boss. welcome everyone. so dreams are fascinating and so weird. >> yes, to me. >> where do they come from? >> welcoming from the brain in a

very different bio chemical state than the waking thoughts are generating but still about all of the usual thoughts and concerns but in this very visual, very emotional language than in the usual verbal logic. >> there are elements of real life and than bizarre. where does the weird stuff come into it and things that never ever happen? >> it is a mix. instead of all the scenarios in the linear time, we have the distant past and wishes and fantasies and fears getting in there and the television show we watched last week and mixing it up much more and the sequence is not linear from a connected group of things. >> talk about the app you created, dream on, how does that

work? >> before going to bed decide what time you want to wake up and what sound scape you want it to play in the half hour before you wake up and when you hit the period at night, it quietly plays the sound scape. if you want nature, or a walk on the beach, and the theory is that you are listening on unconsciously to the sounds in the dreams and influencing the dreams and the app gently wakes you up and you send us a report of the dream and that is how we conducted the experiment. >> we asked the community, if you controlled the dream whoo -- what is perfect dream?

richard, you have researched thousands of dreams and what, if you will the i deal dreams across the spectrum and what are they reflecting about fears, desires and ideals? >> most dreams actually pretty negative. 80% of the dreams reflect worries and concerns. when people want the perfect dream they are looking for something positive. flying is popular. the idea of going on a dream date, particularly among the guys. some people wanted to be attacked by the zombies and all sorts of things. what i should say though is what we are seeing is the evidence from the app you can't order the elements of the dreams, the images that crop up, but much easier to influence the emotional tone of the dream. if it is positive, the dream is feeling more positive so we

focus on the emotional tone of it. >> ryan, do you think that the apps work? >> these are really promising apps and would love to see more information as the studies progress, but we have a pretty good idea that we know relaxation and your mental set is playing a role with the quality of the dreams and since the app basically is focussing just on that it is very effective especially for the people that have a lot of anxiety dreams and taking the app in conjunction with relaxation techniques before bed can change the scope of the dream. >> credible? >> well, a lot of well done research suggesting that wishing i want to have a flying dream tonight, i want to dream, you know, about my boyfriend across the ocean, that's very likely to

influence our dreams, that if people try directing the dreams for a week about 50% have a dream they want to on a simple given topic. so certainly we have some bedtime control over our dreams. so i don't know there is a reason to think that smartphone apps will do this better and listening to sounds from something else, but certainly if people who are, you know, enthused about the smartphones and looking for apps and like this approach, it makes sense that the same things that work without the app would make the app easy to do. >> speaking of being aware of the dream, i was aware of playing the hide and seek and eating. some are talking the lucid

dreaming. rick says... ryan, i did a lot of research for lucid dreaming and played video games last year and i played battlefield four and throughout the research we found out that the gamers are the best lucid dreamers, what is the connection? >> it is about the virtual environment. if you think about it, we dream about how we think in ways in real life. this is a prevalent theory. the continuity theory. if you spend a lot of time crafting boxes and houses and mind craft that type of images

are showing up in the dreams as well. and the way you are thinking and the way you are processing information, creative potential, and we can influence the dreams we can actually focus on problems as well and video games are offering awesome potential for that. >> why not let the sleep run u the natural course and why interrupt it or control it or try to remember it? >> i think one of the main reasons is that it is just rather fun, actually you are living in a dream world and do whatever you want and the idea is taking control of that. there may be something more serious going on, there is a theory of dreaming, as we dream we are working through the anxieties and worries and some of the dreams are negative early in the night and help the process along and give people more positive dreams, there is a

possible therapy angle to it. >> we are going to talk more about the therapy angle when we come back. given a chance will you control your dreams? >> i am a 6th grader and living in nebraska and i play basketball for the chicago bulls. >> i love that. that sounds fun. there are advantages to managing your dreams and we are going to talk about that and is there a dark side of the dream control.

>> welcome back. we are discussing new technology that help you control what you dream at night and how to impact the wakes life. given the chance, we figured

most people would want to control their dreams and everyone we talked to knew how to unfold their dreams. >> my perfect dream would be probably to have a truckload of pizza delivered to my house every day in the giant mansion with a full size basketball court. >> in reality i'm a sales manager and in my dreams i'm 20 pounds heavy and play a wide receiver for the packers. >> i'm 20 pounds thinner and 20 years younger in my dreams and could do about 15 pullups. >> i like the pizza every day. i get the fun, detached aspect to all of this, is there any continuity between our waking life and focussing our dreams to do real problem solving?

>> yes, our a dreams are focussed on the same thoughts and concerns as we have awake. if you want them to focus on a particular problem, you can give that some help right at bedtime by dream incubation, and telling yourself i want to dream an answer, answer to a particular problem, whether it is how you might get along with your boyfriend better or an a chemist trying to solve an a problem and telling yourself you want to dream about it. that greatly increases the likelihood that particular thing out of all the concerns will show up in the dream. >> this waking state between dream, if you will, and reality is not always pleasant, saying... richard, i'm not crazy, i

experienced the same thing twice and it is terrifying. i couldn't see a thing or speak. how do you describe the night terrors and what are they and how do we control them? >> night terrors happen in the deep sleep and suddenly sit up and scream. you go straight back to sleep. they are annoying if you are sleeping next to someone with them. with sleep paralysis. what is happening, you are drifting into the waking state but the paralysis is coming with you. you feel like you can't move and you feel like something is holding you and you feel it is a ghost or alien and if you have

the experience, try to wiggle your toes or fingers often breaks it up. >> there are a lot of similarities when talking about paralysis or night terrors and what about the biology of this? >> rem sleep is intruding. it is actually the other guest, ryan that written some about using that sleep paralysis state when sometimes a luis nating. you have the images there and switching that from something negative to something positive since it is happening any way, so yeah, the sleep paralysis is tied to the dreams and usually on the unpleasant side of the dreams. >> ryan, you are a specialist in lieu lucid dreaming and the

concept of having the dream, is that adequate explanations. >> knowing you are dreaming while you are dreaming. others say an element of a control that comes along with it or attempting to control the dream, whether how successful you are depend on the situation. this practice goes back thousands of years. the buddists for example used the lucid dreaming techniques to do meditations and other types of exercises to presooef, you know, reality, the concept of life as perceive it is an illusion. >> perhaps somebody with a mental illness may try the lucid

dreaming and dissort the lines between the dreams and reality? >> no evidence that lucid dreaming is inducing mental illness. >> not bringing it on. >> at of people are mental illness has difficulty sleeping any ways and they are likely to have the problems like that, and lucid dreaming at times. >> for a second, ryan, jarrod sat and killed people in arizona and that was the shooting where gabby giffords was injured and backing up, you exchanged with

him before the shooting took place. >> yes, over a year before the shooting took place, jarrod had interests in lieu sid dreaming. i didn't know it was actually him. and i found my emails and found i emailed with me. he asked about the dreaming and the questions were very routine and didn't notice it until much later. >> it is interesting to watch, after the incident, as owe know it was widely reported that he was obsessed with the dreaming. >> yes, people are trying to make that connection. lucid dreaming gives you control. control that input and harness the output. saying...

richard, going to with this, there must be concerns and drawbacks to lucid dreaming and trying to control the dreams via the apps. what are some a prevailing misconceptions about the negative consequences that can come from lucid dreaming? >> well, as far as i know there are not many. one would be if you are enjoying the dream control you might want to do more and more of it and retreat from the reality. if you are trying to fly and jumping from a window, you want to make sure you are dreaming and not real life and there are tests that lucid dreamers do passing one hand through another or something like that. i don't know about the psychological concerns about this. it is more on the enjoy and entertaining spectrum. >> richard, i tried the app, i

found it fascinating. but one of a the things i discovered it is interrupting my sleep. i was aware it was there and i felt i gave up the restoretif sleep. >> yes, the techniques or the apps, getting the best night's rest and remembering as many dreams as possible and becoming lucid is not completely compatible if you have a certain amount of time and the app developers separately some are to influence the dreams and helping you recall the dreams and others are for getting to sleep as quickly as possible and sleeping as soundly as possible. >> i need that one. >> i think people will self sect

and people with sleeping problems know who they are and not interested in something that wakes them up and recalling the dreams and others just the opposite. >> well, while technology is helping us control the dreams and problem solve, it is leading to sleep deprivation. we have fact busting and improving your sleep tonight, when we come back. al jazeera america.

>> each night your brains through the sleep cycles, at the start of each of the cycles you enter light sleep and deeper sleep and dream and finally move back to light sleep. these cycles take 90 minutes each and feeling refreshed if

you wake up at the end of the cycle. >> welcome back to the "the stream." breaking down the best way to maximize the sleep. professor, we are more sleep deprived than ever and why? >> well, when i carried out the research, i was amazed at the levels of sleep deprivation. so most of us require about 8-8 and a half hours of sleep per night and we are less than 7 hours and that is a disaster. there is an epidemic of sleeplessness. we have the smartphone and the tablets and computers and using them way into the night. there is blue light coming out of the devices. that is causing a real problem. we have the value sleep. >> are people fooling themselves, i'm good on five or six hours, is there a citizen

logical detriment to not getting the sleep. >> if you need an alarm and you are drinking caffeine in the morning, you are not getting enough sleep. there are ones that wake up five hours after the alarm and don't need the caffeine. yes, we are a sleep deprived nation. the younger set by burning the candle at boths ends. >> nancy says... derek says... richard, i must be a great man, i haven't slept since high school. help me, help me help america here and how do we sleep better, my job requires me to look at the samsung before i sleep and

waking up, i look at the mail and texts, what do i do? >> all sorts of things. one is simply not to use the devices an hour before going to bed. don't put the devices on the bedside table. we have created relaxing music that is on the web. listen to that to drift off. having alcohol before going to sleep is a bad idea, it stops you from getting into the deep sleep. if you awake later, you are better off tieing the brain or distracting the brain. there are all types of tricks. it is important to get them out there and the public to understand them as well. >> one of the areas is dreaming and the brain helps creativity.

how do the brains work? >> the dreams are already doing creative things, thinking about the personal and profes -- professional problems. some people not paying attention to the dreams until the matt formula came to me in the dream and the device i dreamed about, and they work on the problems for the people. but in cultures that teach that you look to the dreams for answers to significant problems, you see much higher rates when i was doing my research a for the committee of sleep, lots of the most dramatic examples coming from india, and tribal africa and so, so we can in this culture tell ourselves that the dreams are important and incubate at bedtime what we want

to dream about, ask our dreams for an answer. >> and hopefully get the answers. thank you all. see you online. >> welcome to al jazeera america. i'm stephanie sy. here are the stories we're following for you. the supreme court up holds michigan bans again affirmative action in college submission. and president obama goes to washington state. he'll meet the survivors and officers respond officers of that deadly mudslide.