In our Neuroscience Seminar this semester, I was so grateful to have the opportunity to learn about Dr. Gabriela Torres Platas research involving lucid dreaming and how to communicate with individuals during this state. Research on sleeping and dreaming is a relatively new topic in neuroscience due to the complexity and limited ability to truly test an individual while they are not awake. In this research, they are specifically testing the possibility of interacting with someone while they are dreaming. This would be done with two-way communication between the dreamer and the researcher during their REM stage of sleep, due to the fact that this is when lucid dreaming occurs. Dr. Platas emphasized her interest on the different types of lucid dreamers around the world, there are different tribes and religions that perform the action of lucid dreaming daily, these are called practitioners. There are different levels to lucid dreaming that one can reach through time and practice, the individuals that are part of the Tibet Tribe, as Dr. Platas discussed during the seminar, are very skilled lucid dreamers and can perform such actions as transversing and witnessing.
During Dr. Platas’ research, the participants were able to signal to the researchers while they were lucid dreaming, and this is what truly interested me in her research. Dr. Platas referred to the article, “Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep” written by Dr. Karen R. Konkoly and other researchers. It discusses the experiment behind this two-way communication. The lucid dreamers had to realize they were in the dream state, then send the signal to the researchers by moving their eyes left to right. This is how the researchers were notified that the participant had begun to lucid dream. The eye movements were the main form of communication between the researcher and participant; they were able to even ask simple mathematical questions to the participant. For example, the researcher would ask the participant what eight minus six was, then the participant would perform two eye movements to signal that their answer to the question was two. By the end of the experiment, they were able to conclude that the participants had answered 29 questions correctly while lucid dreaming. The reason communication during lucid dreaming is such an important task to research is because it is very difficult to perform research and discover new theories about dreaming. Since dreaming does not happen during our wake state, collecting data can be inaccurate or complex, and oftentimes individuals are unable to recall their dreams after waking up.
In an article written by Dr. Benjamin Baird, “The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming” the procedure of using eye movements to signal lucid dreaming is explained. Dr. Baird discusses how the participants can signal when they begin and are about to finish lucid dreaming. He explains how this method of researching lucid dreams can lead to discoveries about levels of consciousness during sleep, and potentially a way to control the content of one’s dreams. Dr. Baird’s research involved comparing lucid REM sleep to non-lucid REM sleep; they concluded that the autonomic nervous system was elevated during lucid REM sleep in comparison to non-lucid. Since researchers found out that lucid dreams occur in REM but at later periods in the night, they believe that lucid dreaming can have a correlation to cortical activity.
Overall, this topic of lucid dreaming and the research behind it is very complex and difficult, that is why this topic is relatively new. Both Dr. Platas and Dr. Baird discuss the similar issue with researching this topic of how hard it is to find lucid dream practitioners, and the accuracy behind what the participants say. Dr. Platas explained how lucid dreaming is a very difficult task that takes a long time and practice to master, she explained how finding participants with the ability to lucid dream and signal that they were actively lucid dreaming was one of the struggles they faced. This new method of researching dreaming is a big step towards discovering information about the level of consciousness the brain can have while in the dream state. Research interests have increased in the cognitive sleep field recently because of the new ability to communicate with participants while in the dream state.
References:
Baird, Benjamin, et al. “The cognitive neuroscience of Lucid dreaming.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 100, May 2019, pp. 305–323, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.03.008.
Konkoly, Karen R., et al. “Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during rem sleep.” Current Biology, vol. 31, no. 7, Apr. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.026.
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