Lecturer: Kristoffer Appel
Fields: Cognitive Science, Physiology, Machine Learning
Content
This course introduces the participants to the scientific study of sleep and dreams, and examines how contemporary technology can be employed to measure and to modulate the experience of sleep and dreaming.
Session 1 will provide an overview of the foundations of sleep and dreaming.
Session 2 will address the question of how sleep and dreams may be measured and modified through technological means—both theoretically and practically, in the laboratory as well as in real-world contexts.
Session 3 will explore more advanced topics, including interactive dreaming, targeted memory reactivation during sleep, and the recording of dreams—technologies that establish connections between waking life and the domain of sleep and dreaming. The course will conclude with a discussion on the future directions of sleep and dream research.
Literature
- Zadra, A., & Stickgold, R. (2021). When brains dream: Exploring the science and mystery of sleep. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Vorster, A. (2019). Warum wir schlafen. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag.
Lecturer
Dr Kristoffer Appel received his PhD in Cognitive Science from Osnabrück University, where he established the university’s sleep laboratory and conducted research at the intersection of sleep, dreaming, and technology. He later founded a non-profit institute for sleep and dream technology in Hamburg, and he is currently also a postdoctoral researcher at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University, Nijmegen, where he works on new approaches to sleep research, including citizen science methods.
Affiliation: Institute of Sleep and Dream Technologies, Hamburg; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Nijmegen
Homepage: sd20.org ; dreslerlab.org