The Old-Fashioned Dream Lab

How Did Scientists Without Modern Technology Study the Dreaming Mind?

- Carolyn Fay

Alfred Maury lies asleep in bed. His assistant brushes a feather over Maury’s lips, sweeping the feather upward, tickling the sleeping man’s nose. Then the assistant shakes Maury awake and asks, “What were you dreaming?”

Maury replies in a drowsy voice. “A man was tearing a mask off of my face. It was torture!”

Torture? No, it was science. Welcome to the old-fashioned dream laboratory.

Alfred Maury’s conversation is a fictional reconstruction, but the French scholar really performed the feather experiment in the nineteenth century. Today, scientists have sophisticated technology to help them study the dreaming brain. Electroencephalography (EEG) machines can record the electrical activity of the brain during sleep. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) captures images of blood flow in the brain. These tools allow scientists to see what’s going on in the brain when we dream. But before these inventions, sleep and dream researchers had to get creative. They took to their beds and experimented on their own dreaming minds.

Two French scholars of the mid nineteenth century revolutionized dream study—not with their conclusions but with their methods. Their names were Alfred Maury and Léon d’Hervey de Saint-Denys. Grab a feather and let’s visit their labs.

The Guillotine Dream