Researcher Raduga told how he drilled into his skull to control dreams: “Brought the future closer”

Romantics and fanatics who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of science have not yet died out in Russia. Mikhail Raduga, our compatriot from Novosibirsk, decided to have a craniotomy and implant a chip in his brain, all in order to influence his dreams. The most important and terrible at the same time in this story is that he did it to himself, drilling through the skull with a drill under local anesthesia. About how it all happened, the researcher shared in an interview with MK.

“I did not dare to tell anyone about my plan, I knew that anyone who heard about it would put me in a psychiatric hospital,” Mikhail admits. “I told only one friend that I was doing something dangerous, and if I don’t call him in an hour, then let him come to me and break the door.”

Saying this, Mikhail hoped that the operation would last an hour, in fact it lasted four hours. He lost a liter of blood, but despite the wild stress and pain that local anesthesia could not completely remove, the researcher nevertheless drilled a hole in his head and put electrodes.

“The most important thing in this operation was not to miss the impact site and not damage the cerebral cortex,” Mikhail continues. But I was ready for any outcome. The only thing I could not agree to was to give up my life’s work. I hope that my experiment will serve science and help move forward in the study of the human brain.

For the first time, Mikhail Raduga “fell ill” with this topic – the management of dreams at a young age. At 16, he experienced a condition called sleep paralysis. Cataplexy occurs at the time of falling asleep or suddenly awakening. At such moments, the muscles are completely paralyzed, the person cannot speak, but everything that happens to him seems very bright, real. Often people explain such states, allegedly, by alien abduction. Mikhail experienced the same thing, he remembers how he soared over the bed and flew out the window, then – a blackout. And in the morning he woke up in his room, as if nothing had happened.

Since then, he began to live a double life. During the day – an ordinary guy, at night – flights in a fictional reality. Mikhail wrote his first book on how to control dreams and make out-of-body travel at the age of 20, after 4 years he began to lecture, at 30 he seriously took up science. Now Mikhail Raduga already has 15 books on this topic, there is a team of like-minded people, his own laboratory, 15 employees, serious scientific journals (mostly foreign ones) publish his articles.

– And yet how did you decide on such a desperate act?

– My goal is to gain complete control over dreams. Imagine a disabled person who cannot move his arm or leg, and in his sleep everything will be available to him. Or take, for example, us. Don’t you want to fly like children fly in their sleep? And erotic dreams – they can also be controlled. I’m not talking about nightmares and insomnia. A person spends a third of his life in a dream. But how to influence it? With the help of various practices, electrical impulses and chemical means, it does not work very well. So I decided that the most effective way is the method of implanting a chip in the motor part of the cerebral cortex.

– Have you graduated from medical school? Where did you get the knowledge to carry out such a complex operation?

– At first I hoped that one of the well-known neurosurgeons would conduct it. But such experiments on humans are banned worldwide. Even Elon Musk was powerless before the law. Then I began to look for doctors who would agree to do it illegally for money, but lately I have been having a hard time with finances. Foreign investment in my laboratory has been greatly reduced, there are almost no funds left – I already had to sell my car and apartment in order to maintain the laboratory. So I decided to try it myself. The idea came to me suddenly: I was sitting at home and saw the back of my head in the mirror. Yeah, I thought, since I see him, then I can carry out manipulations on my own …

– And what, you took a drill and started drilling your skull?!

– No, of course, I prepared for the operation for a long time, studied videos of similar craniotomy operations performed by the most famous neurosurgeons that I found on YouTube, and trained on the skulls of dead sheep.

– How did your experiment end?

– I was able to drill a hole and insert a chip without hitting dangerous areas of the brain, and with the help of implanted electrodes, we managed to influence the world of dreams ..

– How?

– The electrode was located on the cerebral cortex, responsible for the extension of the fingers.

When in a dream I picked up an object, and at that moment I was given a current to the cerebral cortex, then my fingers unbent in a dream and the object fell out of my hand.

“Did it ever occur to you that these are just mind games?” Have you been living with this super-idea for so long that you can invent any dream for yourself without any chips?

– No, I believe that I managed to make a breakthrough in science and bring closer the future that is depicted in the film “Inception”.

– What’s wrong with your head now?

– A few weeks after the operation, the electrodes had to be removed because they began to grow into the brain. Here I no longer began to intervene myself, but turned to the doctors. Naturally, I do not advise anyone to repeat their experience. To be honest, I myself do not know what else it could turn out for me.