Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers In Breakthrough

Updated: 2-22-2021: International scientists have unlocked a new and exciting avenue to explore the world of dreams. Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers In Breakthrough

Humanity has been able reach distant vistas, such as the Moon, the deep oceans, and the wild expanses at Earth’s poles. Now, scientists have made a new breakthrough in the exploration of a very different type of frontier—the hallucinatory world inside dreams.

An international team of researchers was able to achieve real-time dialogues with people in the midst of lucid dreams, a phenomenon that is called “interactive dreaming,” according to a study published on Thursday in Current Biology.

Participants in the study were able to correctly respond to questions, such as simple math problems, while they were deep in the throes of rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep. The research reveals a “relatively unexplored communication channel” that could enable “a new strategy for the empirical exploration of dreams,” the study reports.

“There are studies of lucid dreamers communicating out of dreams, and also remembering to do tasks,” said Karen Konkoly, a PhD student at Northwestern University and first author of the paper, in a call. “But there’s a fairly limited amount of research on the stimuli going into lucid dreams.”

“One thing that surprised us is that you could just say a sentence to somebody, and they could understand it just as it actually is,” she added.

Konkoly and her colleagues recruited 36 people to fall asleep in laboratories located in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, with the aim of entering a lucid state in which the person was aware that they were in a dream.

The study included several experienced lucid dreamers, including one individual with narcolepsy, as well as people who were less familiar with this type of dream.

The researchers verified that participants had entered REM sleep by placing electrodes next to their eyes, on their scalps, and on their chins. By measuring activity such as brainwaves and eyeball movements, sleep experts can determine if a person had entered this deep sleep state.

Some of the participants were then asked to confirm that they were in a dream with a pre-arranged ocular response in which they moved their eyes in a specific left-right pattern.

These eye signals, along with facial contortions, were used as a means of communication during the sleep sessions. For instance, the researchers asked an 19-year-old American participant to subtract six from eight while he was in a lucid dream, and he correctly signaled the answer “two” with two eye movements from left to right. When asked again, he repeated the correct answer.

Roughly 18 percent of the trials resulted in this level of clear and accurate communication from the dreamer; 17 percent produced indecipherable answers, 3 percent ended with incorrect responses, and 60 percent did not provoke any response at all.

“It’s amazing to sit in the lab and ask a bunch of questions, and then somebody might actually answer one,” Konkoly said. “It’s such an immediately rewarding type of experiment to do. You don’t have to wait to analyze your data or anything like that. You can see it right there while they’re still sleeping.”

What’s more, many participants were able to recall the interactions with the researchers after they woke up, with individuals reporting that the prompts sounded like a voiceover narrator or a radio speaker that was clearly coming from outside of their dream.

We’ve all had the experience of waking up from a vivid dream, only to feel as if its fragmentary details are rapidly receding into our waking minds until we can no longer recount its events.

Along those lines, some individuals remembered different questions and answers after they woke up than the ones they received or gave in the dream, highlighting the difficulty of accurately reconstructing dreams once a person is awake.

The team plans to build on this study with more experiments that will probe the possibilities of two-way communication with lucid dreamers.

“We’ve thought of so many experiments we could do with this,” Konkoly said. “I think one predicate that we’re working on now is: how can we optimize the procedure? How can we have this happen more? How can we have people have more lucid dreams? How can we communicate more reliably?”

“We have a lot of different ideas,” she concluded, “and we’re excited to test them.”

Updated: 3-21-2023

These Techniques Might Help You Direct Your Dreams

Some strategies to try: Write down what you want to dream. Say a mantra as you drift off.

I recently chatted with a friend about dreams. I said I long to sail in my sleep. My friend was more specific.

“I want a day of fly fishing, then a 1970s-style night on the town with Farrah Fawcett,” he said. “Oh, and to fly, like Superman.”

Is it possible to direct our dreams?

Scientists who study dreams say the answer may be yes. They point to a small yet emerging body of research that shows that we most likely can, at least sometimes, decide what to dream before we go to sleep and then take some control of our dream while it’s happening.

The most compelling research in the field is on lucid dreaming, which is when a person is aware that a dream is happening and can sometimes influence events within it.

Ever noticed you’re having a nightmare and told yourself to wake up? That’s a lucid dream.

Scientists once thought the idea was a sham. But in recent years, they’ve used MRI machines to show that some people do become aware of their dreams while they’re asleep.

They scanned the brains of lucid dreamers while they were awake, asking them to repeatedly clench their right and left hands.

Then they let them fall asleep in the scanner, with instructions to use eye movements to signal when they became lucid and to then dream about moving their right and left hands. It worked.

People get excited about the idea of lucid dreaming because they believe it will allow them to do what they want while they’re asleep, such as visit with loved ones, work on a creative project or have sex, says Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

“They view their dreams as a kind of virtual reality that’s under their control,” he says.

Yet even if you can influence a dream, you may not be able to control the outcome, Dr. Walker says, adding that just 10% to 20% of people are regular lucid dreamers.

And researchers debate whether it’s beneficial or detrimental to direct our dreams at all. One large study showed that lucid dreamers get less restorative sleep, while a small one indicated that they were more refreshed in the morning.

It’s also not that easy. Just ask my dear mom.

After I told her that I was working on this column, she decided to try to dream about my father, who died last year. For five nights in a row, she says, she looked at pictures of him before bed, whispered his name when she closed her eyes, and snuggled up to “one of his ratty, old T-shirts.” Then she called me, annoyed. “It’s all bunk,” she announced. “Not a damn thing happened.”

Some people say they are successful. In reporting this story, I heard from people who say they have directed themselves to dream about writing poetry, going skiing and figuring out a way to talk to a child about a problem. One woman likes to invent things in her dreams.

A cinematographer who has worked on horror movies, including “Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” reads a script before bed, wills himself to dream about it and wakes up with new ideas on how to film it.

And you think your dreams are scary.

Jay Soled, 59, says he’s been successfully directing his dreams most of his life. As an unathletic teenager, he dreamed that he was a star pitcher on the baseball team, winning the game with a ninth-inning strikeout. “This was an appealing formula because the girls would flock all over me,” he says.

As an adult, the Rutgers University tax professor’s go-to scenarios have changed. Now, he instructs himself to dream of a favorite family trip, romantic dinner with his wife or time spent playing with his late dog.

And often he dreams that he’s a mysterious rock star called “the Unknown” and no one knows his true identity. In his dream, he performs at the old Giants Stadium, revealing himself to be a rock god and impressing thousands, including his wife.

“Why wouldn’t you try to go to sleep this way?” he says. “You get to go to places that don’t exist in real life.”

How can you increase your chances of successfully directing your dreams? Lucid dream researchers say these steps may help.

During The Day

Set an intention. Tell yourself that you want to choose what to dream tonight—and that you’ll be aware that you’re dreaming. Dr. Walker’s example: “Next time I’m dreaming, I will remember I’m dreaming.” Research shows that this technique, called the “mnemonic induction of lucid dreams,” may help, he says.

Perform reality checks throughout the day. Flip a light switch, for example. When the light goes on, remind yourself that you’re awake.

“The idea is that if you keep doing this while you’re awake, it will become an ingrained habit that will bleed over into when you are dreaming,” says Dr. Walker, who hosts a podcast and is the author of “Why We Sleep.” “And in a dream it could trigger lucidity.”

Before Bed

Write down what you want to dream. Be brief. “Dreaming minds do not process language as well,” says Deirdre Barrett, a researcher who lectures about dreams at Harvard Medical School.

Form a mental image of what you want to dream, suggests Dr. Barrett, author of “The Committee of Sleep.” You could also arrange objects or pictures by your bed as prompts, she says.

As you drift off, remind yourself that you want to dream about these objects and become aware that you’re dreaming. A mantra may help. I try: “Sailing, sailing, sailing…”

While You’re Asleep

If you notice you’re dreaming, remind yourself what you wanted to do in the dream. And try to stay calm, recommends Robert Waggoner, who has written books on lucid dreaming. You don’t want to wake yourself up too soon by getting excited.

Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers In Breakthrough

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