Is it possible to perform inception

The ominous layer of Limbo is one of Inception 's more unlikely assertions. According to Cobb, an unwary dreamer can lose all sense of reality in Limbo, with their mind refusing to awaken back to the outside world.

Some lucid dreamers have reported wanting to wake up but being unable, and sleep paralysis is a condition where sleep states overlap, resulting in an unsettling mix of consciousness and dreaming, but neither accurately represents Inception 's Limbo prison.

There is uncertainty over whether coma patients can dream via BBC Science Focus , but in these instances, it's the physical injury keeping the person from waking, not a lost grasp of reality - entirely the opposite to Inception. Inception sets the imagination racing for anyone who's ever wished they could read their crush's mind, or find out their boss' secret password, but thankfully those folks are firmly out of luck. Cobb makes a living by stealing secrets from the subconscious, but this is much harder in reality than Leonardo DiCaprio makes it look.

The closest real-world comparison to Cobb's line of work would be the dubious practice of hypnotism. Instead of mentally infiltrating a person's subconscious, a hypnotist claims to lull their subject in a subconscious state, whereby they become more open to suggestion - quacking like a duck, and all the other embarrassing stereotypical hilarity.

Naturally, some have questioned whether hypnotism could be used to draw out a person's innermost secrets, but while hypnotism isn't an exact science if, indeed, a science at all , it's generally accepted that this cannot happen.

Despite what stage hypnotists and Hollywood might have you believe, those being lulled into a hypnotic state retain control, and won't be found spilling their darkest thoughts. Those wanting to emulate Cobb will simply have to hope their target shouts out loudly in their sleep As brain imagining technology continues to improve, scans can currently tell which cortex is active during sleep via Forbes , offering some clues as to what the subject might be dreaming about.

Several decades into the future, it's not inconceivable that this tech could become more accurate in revealing the contents of a person's dream.

According to the rules of Inception , taking something from the human mind is much easier than planting it there. Cobb and Arthur are renowned for their ability to steal secrets from a dreamer's subconscious, but the act of inception has only been attempted a handful of times - twice that the audience learns of. Ironically, the reverse is true in reality - suggesting an idea to the human mind is far simpler than forcibly taking one from it.

Inception happens every day when the mind subconsciously and automatically absorbs visual and auditory information. Advertisers take advantage of this by using subliminal messaging to ingrain their product into the consumer's mind, with even small details such as color, font and wording designed to send a specific message that the viewer won't necessarily be aware of, but will still compel them to try that energy drink, or question whether they really do have the best value broadband deal.

The power of suggestion is a key weapon in the arsenal of British performer Derren Brown, who utilizes a combination of suggestion and psychology for his ambitious stunts. In The Push , for example, a PR event is entirely orchestrated around compelling an ordinary member of the public shove a man to his death, and while not all succumb to the intense suggestion, some do. In another stunt, Brown used subliminal imaging on a group of advertising executives, getting them to come up with an idea eerily similar to one he'd predicted previously.

Although Inception might assert the opposite, the brain is far easier to trick into action than into revealing closely guarded secrets.

Essentially, they created a positive association with that a particular place, while the mice slept. Later, when the mice woke, they went directly toward the place that had been associated with the reward signal in their dreams.

Similar studies have been done to show that rats may also plan future trips while they sleep. Then, with the electrodes still in their brains, the rats took a nap. Researchers continued to monitor their place cell activity, and saw new patterns in the ways the cells send out signals. When the rats woke up, researchers placed them back in the T-shaped apparatus and removed both the food and the barrier to the food.

The rats explored the new area, and scientists saw the same patterns of firing cells that they did when the rats were asleep, as if they had planned the trip while resting. Scientists from the University of California-Davis have shown that people have place cells , though, by looking at the neurological activity of epilepsy patients undergoing seizure monitoring. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy.

The team wanted to see whether gamma brainwaves caused the lucid dreams, or whether both were side effects of some other change.

So Voss and her colleagues began another study in which they stimulated the brain of 27 sleeping volunteers, using a non-invasive technique called transcranial alternating current. Each volunteer came into the lab on many different nights.

As they slept, their neural activity was monitored with EEG to identify when they entered rapid eye movement REM sleep. On each night, the subject then received electrical stimulation at a different frequency, ranging between 2 and hertz for 2 minutes, or a sham treatment that had no effect on the brain. The participants were then woken up and asked to rate their dream consciousness on a standard scale. Previous work has shown that during lucid dreaming, three of eight factors on this scale are substantially increased, including awareness of dreaming, control over plot and third-person perspective.

Sure enough, these three factors all increased after volunteers received stimulation at a frequency of 40 Hz, which caused an increase in gamma brainwave activity. Much higher and lower frequencies of stimulation — outside of the gamma range — had no effect on lucid dreaming.