The world of dreams and the functioning of the mind while we sleep is still a fairly unknown field for science, but deciphering its mysteries is key and can be very useful to help, for example, to treat certain problems of insomnia, nightmares or sleep low quality.
Dreaming is a very common phenomenon, but science has not yet been able to adequately explain it since, upon awakening, it is common to forget or distort the lived experience. When we dream we can have sensations so real that it gives the impression that our mind is in a very distant place and completely disconnected from what is happening around it. However, a study just published in the journal Current Biology shows that the border between sleep and wakefulness is weaker than it appears. In it, researchers show that it is possible for a person who is sleeping and dreaming to answer questions or even solve simple math problems.
To do this, the scientists decided to take advantage of the experience of lucid dreams, which are characterized by the fact that the individual who sleeps is aware that they are dreaming. There are people who are able to have this type of experience frequently, but lucid dreaming can also be trained by different methods. Participants in the study received prior training to promote the experience of lucid dreaming and two-way communication: ” We found that people in REM sleep phase can interact and participate in communication in real time ,” explains Ken Paller, lead author of work and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University (Chicago).
“We also show that these people are able to understand questions, participate in working memory operations and produce answers.” Volunteers who responded successfully to the test responded by eye movements or facial muscle contractions. Researchers refer to these conversations as “interactive dreams.” Of the 36 participants, the researchers obtained positive two-way communication responses on 29 occasions and in six of the individuals tested. This is a small sample with modest results, but the article includes four experiments performed independently and using various approaches in different laboratories in the US and Europe, indicating that this would not be an isolated or misidentified phenomenon.
Do you want to learn to have lucid dreams?
Researchers at Paller’s laboratory have developed a training app to achieve lucid dreams that is available to anyone who wants to try.
The team’s goal is to learn more about the connections between sleep and memory processing, and to apply these methods to compare cognitive abilities during dreams and wakefulness. In addition, they can also be used to help solve problems such as recurring nightmares.
In this mini documentary for PBS NOVA one of the lucid dreaming experiments carried out by the team of scientists is collected:
