The Cultivation of Lucid Dreams and Their Purpose

 

Within Neuroscience and Psychology and overall, when studying the brain, studies regarding sleep and the wave patterns within it are highly discussed. Within the subject of sleep, dreams come to the forefront. The most illusive subject of dream studies is the subject of lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are distinctly different than normal dreams because within normal dreams, the dreamer has no control over their dreams and cannot shape any aspect of the dream. Whereas within lucid dreams, the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming therefore making the dreamer able to control multiple aspects of the dream controllable such as characters, narrative and even environment. Within Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep by Karen R. Konkoly, Kristoffer Appel, Emma Chanabi, …, Delphine Oudiette, Martin Dresler, Ken A. Paller, the researchers aim to further discuss the obscurities of lucid dreams.

Dr. Karen Konkoly of Northwestern University, Evanston IL whose research interests most importantly include “how dreams are generated and what functions they may serve” gave a presentation in which she spoke on her work with dreams, more specifically lucid dreams, and their obscurities. Within the paper presented, the researchers aimed to see how far the participants could manipulate the outcome of their dream. The outcome of this study showed that participants were seen to be able to answer and complete tasks within their lucid dreams as instructed. Participants were able to perform veridical perceptual analysis of novel information, computing, and replying in tandem. Furthermore, their actions also elicited specific and unique responses from muscles and eye movements amongst the individuals. The reason this study is extremely unique and developmental to the study of lucid dreams and dreaming is because, instead of the dreamers relaying what they were told to do and perhaps executed during their dream as they were waking up, the researchers aimed to obtain evidence that it was possible to interview and question the dreamers while they were still during REM.

Similarly, in Is It a Good Idea to Cultivate Lucid Dreaming? By Raphael Vallat and Perrine Marie Ruby speaks about lucid dreaming. Within this article it speaks on the possible risks of lucid dreaming since it is seen as a desirable experience almost like a real life “virtual reality.” The first point the authors pose is that inducing lucid dreaming or LD can disrupt sleep causing a lack of consistent sleep cycle. One technique blatantly requires participants wake up and fall back asleep disrupting the sleep cycle, fittingly named “Wake-up-back-to-Bed.” The issue with interrupting sleep is that it causes fragmentation in sleep, which then modifies the architecture overall and decreases the duration. The other method necessitates the use of stimuli delivery to then trigger lucidity. Much like in the first article REM sleep was studied in tandem with lucid dreaming seeing which regions of the brain were activated and deactivated which include the bilateral precuneus, parietal lobules, and prefrontal and occipital-temporal cortices (Dresler et. al., 2012). These regions are important within both studies because they play key roles in higher cognitive functions which specifically include self-awareness and executive functions. These functions are vital since they account for the self-awareness, alertness, and voluntary control within lucid dreams.

 These two articles combined can be used to pose the question why is lucid dreaming a possibility and does it serve any broader purpose? If lucid dreaming is in any terms beneficial, why does eliciting it require a significant amount of effort, external stimuli, and even disrupting the sleep cycle. Another question is why physical actions are displayed during lucid dreaming and whether they serve any purpose, or whether they are just a product of an active brain during REM and lucid dreams.

 

 

References

Konkoly, Karen, et al. “Real-Time Dialogue between Experimenters and Dreamers During Rem Sleep.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020. Crossref, doi:10.2139/ssrn.3606772.

Vallat, Raphael, and Perrine Marie Ruby. “Is It a Good Idea to Cultivate Lucid Dreaming?” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019. Crossref, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02585.