The most advanced, fully scriptable, real-time

Lucid Dreaming Platform




New Lucid Dreaming paper using ZMax:
Dream Lucidity is Associated with Positive Waking Mood (Carr et al) | (pubmed link)


THE ONLY SLEEP HEADBAND DESIGNED FOR ACCURACY

ZMax is the only accurate sleep headband. It is trusted by renowned sleep science researchers all over Europe.





"The only research-ready equipment
available is ZMax"

Frontiers in Neuroscience article about ZMax and lucid dreaming

RESEARCH GRADE EEG SENSOR

Consumer oriented EEG headbands prioritize look and feel over signal accuracy.
They use dry electrodes which perform poorly and preclude accurate sleep scoring.
Do not believe the hype: no amount of post-processing can recover data that has not been captured.
ZMax uses the highest quality Ag/AgCl biocompatible hydrogel for its custom, multi-use electrode patch.
ZMax vs PSG comparison Sample data files Screenshots

State of the art analysis of sleep structure

The ZMax REM detection algorithm is the result of several years of research into sleep structure, sleep phenotypes and writing thousands of custom MATLAB functions for analyzing specifically the EEG patterns produced by the ZMax electrode configuration, using ad-hoc vision algorithms. ZMax algorithms go way beyond what is recognized as "state of the art" in sleep research. For instance, no sleep staging algorithm published or mentioned on pubmed on the latest scientific papers addresses or even recognizes sleep EEG frequency band phenotypes or accounts for frequency band overlap. ZMax does not use generic, naive algorithms that assume that every person's brain is the same. Rather, it digs deep into your sleep structure to determine your unique, individual phenotype, and uses that phenotype to determine when you enter REM sleep.

Far more difficult than determining sleep stage with clean data is addressing the prevalence of dozens of types of artifacts on any EEG recording. Eyelid flutter, sweating, movement artifacts, teeth clenching and grinding, facial twitches, arousals, electrical interference and many more, all produce characteristic but highly variable artifacts that must be categorized and handled. When these are not handled, any algorithm will fail. For instance, sweating overlaps delta wave frequency; EMG activity overlaps beta and gamma activity. Up/down eye movements appear similar to K complexes. It takes years to develop algorithms robust enough to deal with the complexity of sleep activity, and it makes no commercial sense to do so when you can avoid disclosing the raw data and rely on the consumer's ignorance instead - this is why consumer sleep EEGs, and particulartly the much smaller subset of EEG based lucid dreaming devices, cannot be accurate. There is simply no commercial incentive to make them accurate.

ZMax is accurate because it is not primarily a lucid dreaming device but a next generation research tool on top of which lucid dreaming functions are added.

Light, auditory and tactile dream cues



Once you have a way to acquire highly accurate sleep data, and detect REM sleep with high precision, the fun starts! ZMax allows you to experiment with different light patterns and even tactile stimulation for your dream cue. Experiment with unique light patterns to ensure dream incorporation. Did you know that tactile stimulation has higher dream incorporation rates, especially on the head?* You can play an MP3 file when you begin dreaming, or use voice synthesis to try to influence the content of your dreams. Please note that despite the screenshot, Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights is not actually recommended as a lucid dream cue (but perhaps as a wake up alarm :)).

* Paul, Franc; Schadlich, Melanie; Erlacher, Daniel (2014). Lucid dream induction by visual and tactile stimulation: An exploratory sleep laboratory study. International Journal of dream research, 7(1), pp. 61-66. PDF

Visualize your sleep in the morning


Unlike 'toy' sleep EEG devices, ZMax allows you to review, study, analyze and score your sleep data. The Hypnodyne youtube channel has sleep scoring tutorials (under construction) that teach you about sleep structure and how to look at and interpret ZMax recordings and spectrograms. You can easily locate and determine the strength of your sleep spindles, sudden bursts of oscillatory brain activity generated in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus that occur during sleep stages 2 and 3. You can easily determine whether you are a frontal alpha producer and if so whether your alpha waves are single or double peak. Frontal alpha oscillations are associated with creativity. You can easily determine whether you produce strong beta waves during REM. You can look at your dreaming pattern and the eye movement patterns during dreams.

And let's not forget, you can view the actual time spent asleep, and the amount of body movements, yielding great insight into your sleep depth and stability.

Finally, if you want us to score your sleep for you for a per-recording fee, we offer both manual scoring by a qualified technician, and an automatic scoring service (these are not needed for Lucid Dreaming purposes, since REM detection is included and free).

Verify REM detection and stimulation points


You can drill deep into your night-time activity, inspect the results of the ZMax REM detection, and verify when the dream cue was delivered. If you are an experienced lucid dreamer, you can even signal lucidity with your eye movements, and observe those in the post-stimulation period. Beware of any EEG device or lucid dreaming toy that does not allow you to inspect results.

Audio dream logging

A key component of dream research is remembering dreams. And a key component of remembering dreams is writing them down as soon as one wakes up. This has traditionally required turning on a light, finding pen and paper, and keeping your eyes open until you have written down your dream. Unfortunately, returning to sleep is often difficult after logging a dream on a dream journal. Many people give up lucid dreaming and dream tracking because the act of logging requires too much discipline.

HDRecorder allows you to record a sound file by just pushing a button on the forehead-worn ZMax transmitter. Each time the button is pushed, a new MP3 file is recorded right in the program folder. The operation is assisted by voice synthesis and can be carried out without ever opening your eyes, getting up from bed or turning on a light or your PC monitor.

Peer to peer dream research

ZMax is built as a peer-to-peer system from the ground up. Whatever you can do on your PC, you can also do remotely over the internet. If you have a lucid dreaming partner, perhaps in another time zone, they can monitor your sleep and experiment with stimulation in real time, perhaps switching roles the following night. You may be interested in the lucid dream communication experiments by Stephen LaBerge.

Learn more


Scripting

You can use javascript to script ZMax behavior. For instance, you can detect REM sleep and play an MP3 sound in response. You can also configure the functions of the three ZMax buttons. For instance, you can configure the middle button to turn off the monitor. Or play some music as you are falling asleep and use the right button to stop the playback. The scripting possibilities are still under heavy development and more possibilities will be added soon - if you have a particular application in mind please write us.

Expandable platform

  • In this video a fragrance dispenser (deodorizer) is hacked and connected to the ZMax platform. Release of fragrance can now be triggered via Javascript, for instance during REM sleep, as a dream cue or as a way to hack the mood and affect of the dream.



  • In this video a script is used to train you to recognize dream cues while you fall asleep, removing the main obstacle to having lucid dreaming, that is expending time and attention throughout the day learning the habit of doing dream checks in response to certain stimuli.



  • In this video another script tries to inject suggestions to alter dream content by waiting for body movements specifically occurring during REM sleep periods.



  • All these projects took less than a day. Check the Video tutorials page for more lucid dreaming tutorials and updates.