Clinical potential + ethics: “dream sovereignty”

39:00sleep and you can cue stuff, you could theoretically restructure traumatic memories. >> That's a huge deal >> to not be traumatic anymore. >> Yeah, that's a huge deal, >> right? That's a huge deal. >> Yeah. Know, I mean, for veterans, for >> victims of abuse. I mean, there's a whole swath of people who could majorly benefit >> from that. >> Yeah. And of course, with all of this comes the ethical concern, >> of course. >> Right. because you're you're you're beating this sensory gate >> to get into dreams. >> Now imagine if researchers can cue puzzle solutions. What if like commercial or malicious actors attempt to embed like branded

39:42content, >> you know, alter preferences? This is I I I get remembered of um Tom Hardy's role in Inception as like the defense guy. He was like, "Dream dream a little bigger." And he like came up with a giant gun. >> Yep. >> Um it's like it's like so is dream sovereignty >> going to now be the premier neuroethical challenge? >> I mean this and this might this what's so I didn't even think about this nexus but while this might sound like oh this is early stage research and you know there's a ways to go which is true. uh if you just look at in the US the recent uh disclosures around uh what has been

40:23colloquially called Havana syndrome but is uh what is also known as anomalous health incidents. There is real legitimate congressional hearings and restitution being provided to veterans who've been victims of what are being called microwave weapon attacks from some foreign actor. There are these diplomats who are It started in Havana, Cuba, which is why it's called Havana syndrome, where you know what the theory of the case is that there's this sort of small form factor microwave weapon. You point it at the target and it creates all kinds of nausea and, you know, neurological issues. Allegedly, the uh the director of national intelligence and some of their people just went to

41:03review one of these Havana syndrome weapons recently in order to bring it into the US inventory. uh it's been an issue that the government's very hesitant to discuss or address I think because it touches on the same uh neurological sovereignty question >> that this issue brings up which is not an area we've really spent a lot of time thinking about but you know these technologies are giving us getting us to a place where >> we can have impact on individuals uh external to their brain >> Yeah. but impacts their brain. And that gets >> it gets tricky. >> That gets very dicey.

41:44>> Yeah, it gets very very tricky. It's it's a it's a frontier in neuroscience. I think it's going to be it's going to be incredibly exciting and a little bit weird. >> I just want to also briefly note that it it you know we talk about this is a science show so we talk about the research and like how it you know what the implications are and what people are doing. Just because that's the focus of the show does not mean that we don't identify with and understand the >> risks and challenges that are related to these in a whole number of different ways and situations. There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking about that area uh and do content around that. We just try to talk about the science from first principles to give everyone a frame of reference to

42:25understand where is technology going and how is it going to impact our everyday life. >> Yeah. And how does it work? >> And how does it work? because we need to know how these things work to know to even have the discussion about neurological sovereignty which sounds so ridiculous but once you know how it works you get why that's important to discuss >> but we just don't yet always know how it works so >> exactly yeah and I just wanted to end this story on a lighter note >> um there's a movie uh little indie film that I was involved in I was the scientific adviser on this film called gold mine from a mutual friend of ours was the producer director and writer of the film it is being distribut distributed on Amazon and other digital platforms starting February 24th, 2026.

43:06I was the um scientific adviser on the film. Um Lester was involved in some of the promotion of it. It's about it. It's a really nice story about uh fatheraughter relationship. It involves virtual reality,