Nikita and Maryna are pioneers in the field of Lucid Dreaming. Lucid Dreaming is a way to cultivate what your dreams are intentionally, and remember them in the morning. There are many varied perspectives about what happens when we dream, where our mind/spirits go and do, and what the impact is in the waking days of dreams. In the western scientific community we are fact-based. As such we tend to look at what signals are measurable in the brain, like Delta waves, with Theta Spikes. One western cognitive science hypothesis is that dreaming, especially Rapid Eye Movement (REM), is a time the brain integrates its input from the previous day into deeper memory and connections, filtering out what it believes is relevant and what goes out the door.
Nikita is an engineer and mathematician by trade. He won a trip to the US from Russia for a Google Hackathon, and then decided to focus his efforts on building this product. The product looks like a fancy headband (not the 70’s hoops headband with rainbow colors, but a little fatter and with electronics stuffed in there). The hardware device uses Trans Cranial Stimulation, TCS in the biz, to stimulate the brain during sleep for deeper more vivid dreams. The current isn’t super strong, but just strong enough to entrain parts of the brain to the spectrum known for dream-state.
The hardware device is interesting in and of itself. Nikita built it from scratch, chipset up to program. He measures skin conductance to determine the correct timing and frequency to emit.
I admire anyone who comes to a foreign country to live. Then, add on the capacity to do business in another country at the same time. They are an impressive team, full of passion about their product and the market.
I enjoyed our conversation, the education they gave me, and am excited to see how TCS and TCMS (Trans Cranial Magnetic Stimulation) integrates with Virtual Reality as these peripherals become more common in the Mental Health Market.