Inducing Lucid Dreaming

    Research on dreaming has been held back by a lack of communication between dreamers and researchers. Previous scientific investigations have expressed that there is a delay in dreaming and waking up to report on the dream due to the change in state. In the article “Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep”, Konkoly et al. overcame this problem by successfully establishing two-way real time communication during lucid dreaming. In the experiment, volunteers in REM sleep- the sleep stage where dreaming occurs- perceived the questions asked by the experimenters and answered them. The study also commented that regardless of experience with lucid dreaming (some participants were those that never experienced a lucid dream while others had a few experiences and one frequently had lucid dreams because of their narcolepsy), they were able to exhibit various tasks as instructed. 
    This allows for further research into practical applications. The researchers also determined that interactive dreaming could be adapted in such a way to facilitate an individual’s objectives like “to practice a musical or athletic skill... dreaming about facts or skills one is trying to learn can correlate with enhanced performance… interactive dreaming could also be used to solve problems and promote creativity—the next moonshot ideas could be produced with an interactive method that can combine the creative advantages of dreaming with the logical advantages of wake.” (Konkoly et al., 2021). Applications also include the potential to deal with emotional trauma as described in studies related to giving those suffering from recurrent nightmares (as associated with PTSD) the opportunity to lessen the impact of their ordeals. 
    However, lucid dreaming is extremely rare and is not a phenomenon mostly controlled by will alone. For this purpose, the industry is creating applications and portable devices to induce lucid dreaming. In the article “Portable Devices to Induce Lucid Dreams—Are They Reliable?”, Mota-Rolim et al. discuss how high-tech companies are creating portable LD induction devices that are commercially available to the general public. These devices capture EEG activity for the online detection of REM sleep and “to induce lucidity, most devices provide visual, auditory, and/or tactile stimuli as sensory cues, which can become incubated into the dream content to alert dreamers that they are dreaming but without waking them up... other devices provide transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) of the frontal cortex” (Mota-Rolim et al., 2019). The study found that most devices that were launched on crowdfunding platforms were able to raise more than sufficient funding which supports the claim that the public is very much interested in LD induction technologies. 

References

Konkoly, K., Appel, K., Chabani, E., Mironov, A. Y., Mangiaruga, A., Gott, J., Mallett, R., 
    Caughran, B., Witkowski, S., Whitmore, N., Berent, J., Weber, F., Pipa, G., Türker, B., Maranci, J. B.,        Sinin, A., Dorokhov, V., Arnulf, I., Oudiette, D., Paller, K. (2021, April 12). Real-time dialogue between     experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. ScienceDirect. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from            https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221000592?via%3Dihub

Mota-Rolim, S. A., Pavlou, A., Nascimento, G. C., Fontenele-Araujo, J., & Ribeiro, S. (2021,
    January 1). Portable devices to induce lucid dreams-are they reliable? Frontiers. Retrieved October 23,     2021, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00428/full.