New App Aims To Track Your Dreams

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Liz Stinson reports that 'Shadow,' a new app recently launched on Kickstarter, will make recording and remembering your dreams simple. 'There's a lot going on in the subconscious mind that if you can start to pull out little details, you start to get a wider picture of yourself,' says designer Hunter Lee Soik. Most of the time, alarm clocks abruptly blast through your consciousness, ripping you from the depths of sleep. In contrast, Shadow's alarm system gradually transitions users through their hypnopompic state, that not-quite-asleep, not-quite-awake phase, which has be proven to help you better remember your dreams. Once you deactivate the alarm, users are prompted to record their dreams either via voice or typing text. The app then transcribes your dreams and stores them in an ever-growing digital dream journal that keeps track of your long-term dream and sleep patterns and helps you visualize patterns and make connections between your sleep patterns, daily life, and what you dream about. 'We're socialized to think of sleep as inactivity, but certain parts of our brain — the parts that handle things like problem solving and memory — are most active while we're sleeping,' says Soik. 'That's a huge amount of potential data we're forgetting each morning.'" I prefer a notebook on the nightstand, myself.