Thursday Things: Wolves Are Listening Edition
29 June 2023. Vol 5 No 26. By Dan McGirt. #203
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Do wolves dream of electric sheep? Probably not. Photo by Robert Thiemann on Unsplash
Dream weaver
Can you script your dreams?
I once had a dream in which, at the end of the dream, I went around thanking all the “dream extras” (which is what I call all the people in your dreams who aren’t people you know) and signed their copies of the script for that dream. Hey, those imaginary people work hard and they deserve some appreciation!
My own peculiar subconscious psychology aside, though, can you intentionally prompt yourself (or be prompted) to dream about a specific topic?
Informally, I’d say yes. I think a lot of us do this — if you go to sleep with a particular problem or subject on your mind, sometimes your dreams go that way.
And now it’s officially yes also: Harnessing Hypnagogia: MIT and Harvard’s Breakthrough in Boosting Creativity Through Targeted Dream Incubation
A new study finds people are more creative after waking from the earliest stage of sleep, especially when they are guided to dream about a particular topic.
Feeling stuck on a problem that seems unsolvable? You may come up with a creative solution after a short nap — very short, according to a new study from MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers.
During the phase when you’re drifting between sleep and waking, a state known as sleep onset, the creative mind is particularly fertile, the researchers showed. They also demonstrated, for the first time, that when people are prompted to dream about a particular topic during that sleep phase, they perform much more creatively when later asked to perform three creativity tasks around that topic.
“When you are prompted to dream about a topic during sleep onset, you can have dream experiences that you can later use for these creative tasks,” says Kathleen Esfahany, an MIT senior and one of the lead authors of the study.
That is intriguing. Tell us more.
People who received this prompting, known as “targeted dream incubation,” generated more creative stories than people who napped without a specific prompt or people who stayed awake. The findings suggest that during this dream state, the brain makes more wide-ranging connections between disparate concepts, providing a boost in creativity, the researchers say.
“If you access this brain state, you can be more creative in your waking life,” says Adam Haar Horowitz, a postdoc in the MIT Media Lab and a lead author of the study, which was published recently in the journal Scientific Reports.
It’s a long article, so if you have an interest in harnessing dreams to enhance your waking creativity, give it a read.
Get all the science at: “Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance” by Adam Haar Horowitz, Kathleen Esfahany, Tomás Vega Gálvez, Pattie Maes and Robert Stickgold, 15 May 2023, Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-31361-w
Did someone say dinner? Photo by Robert Larsson on Unsplash
My, what big ears you have!
If you’ve ever wondered if wolves can recognize the voices of individual humans, then you don’t want to miss the latest issue of Animal Cognition!
It turns out that, yes, Like dogs, wolves recognize familiar human voices
Here, wolfie, wolfie, wolfie! Like dogs, wolves recognize and respond to the voices of familiar humans more than strangers, according to a study that has implications both for the story of canine domestication and our broader understanding of the natural world.
Holly Root‑Gutteridge of the University of Lincoln, a co-author of the paper that appeared in Animal Cognition this week, told AFP a longstanding theory held that dogs' ability to distinguish human voices was a consequence of generations of selective breeding.
Let me go on record now as saying that was a stupid theory. If crows can hold grudges and pass them down for generations, surely wolves can tell a familiar person’s voice from a strangers. But I understand scientists have to be systematic about these things.
Root‑Gutteridge and colleagues carried out experiments across five zoos and wildlife parks in Spain, involving a total of 24 gray wolves, both male and female, aged between one and 13.
The team set up speakers and first played the animals the voice of a number of strangers that they would "habituate" to, in other words, get bored of, because they decided it was not salient to them.
Then, they played the wolves the voice of their keeper who would say familiar things to them in Spanish, such as "Hey, what's up wolves?" or "Hello little ones, good morning, how's it going?"
In gestures that would be instantly recognizable to any dog owner, the wolves raised their heads, pricked their ears up, and turned towards the speaker.
To test the effect wasn't random, the researchers went back to playing the wolves recordings of strangers, and found they once more lost interest.
Finally, to make sure the wolves genuinely knew their keepers' voices, rather than just knowing words that the familiar humans would normally say to them, the team mixed things up and had the keepers utter a stream of unfamiliar phrases.
Once more the results held up.
That said, these are wolves in a zoo recognizing the voices of the people who feed them. Do wolves recognize the voice that means food? Ask Little Red Riding Hood.
So I’m not sure this really settles, in an evidentiary sense, the question of whether wolves in the wild can distinguish familiar and unfamiliar human voices. But I rather suspect they can. So watch what you say out there in the wild — the wolves are listening. And taking down names.
And be especially nice to any wolves that show up in your dreams. Because they will remember…
Get all the science details at Grey wolves (Canis lupus) discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar human voices from the June 20, 2023 edition of Animal Cognition.
“See you tonight.” Photo by Jannik Selz on Unsplash
Thank you for reading!
Please click the hearts, leave a comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. Let me know if you dream about wolves tonight. See you next Thursday!