Each week in our Neuroscience Seminar at Loyola, we hear from researchers who push the boundaries of what we think the brain is capable of. One of the most fascinating talks this semester that really caught my attention was given by Dr. Gabriela Torres-Platas, PhD. She put forward pioneering work into the neuroscience of dreaming. She gave a lecture about a paper called “Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep” by Konkoly and colleagues, a study that questioned the decades-old assertion that it was impossible to communicate with someone who’s sleeping. After carefully reading the article and listening to Dr. Torres-Platas’s discussion, I took away with a completely new perspective on the cognitive abilities preserved during sleep and what “lucid dreaming” can reveal about consciousness.
To understand the significance of this study, it’s important to remember the limitations of traditional dream research. Most scientific information about dreams comes from retrospective dream reports, which can, in some cases, become incomplete, distorted or forgettable before anyone wakes up. There is something the researchers did that is nearly impossible in this study.They figured out how to speak to people while they were dreaming. By establishing protocols for two-way real-time communication between an experimenter and a sleeping person during REM sleep — and during lucid dreams, when the dreamer comes to understand that he or she is dreaming — possible. Of the four labs they operated, they trained lucid dreamers to respond to oral or visual cues during REM using special eye-movement or facial muscle movements. The experiment confirmed REM sleep with full polysomnography alongside study participants who participated in purposeful eye motions or facial muscle contractions to respond to questions. Participants were able to be asked questions, store information in their working memory, and even perform math problems accurately while sleeping, in the lucid dreams. And twenty-nine times in trials from that same era people answered correctly — proof you can send and receive messages to someone who is dreaming. Surprisingly enough, the team logged all the responses, including 29 correct answers, among a total of six people, suggesting that the people who are dream-induced can process an external stimulus, do basic cognitive tasks and respond in an intelligent manner, without waking up. This approach allows people in REM sleep to have an instant conversation with their surroundings and may disrupt the traditional belief that the mind shuts down outside signals at night with new methods of studying how thinking is happening in dreaming.
The individual examples alone are stunning. In one, a sleeper was presented with word-for-word math “8 minus 6?” and answered in seconds, with two clear movements of left- to right-eyed eyes — the right answer. In another, a participant decoded Morse-coded math problems that appeared as alternating flashes of colored light behind their eyelids. A patient with narcolepsy, who naturally experiences frequent lucid dreams, answered yes/no questions by contracting either the zygomatic (smiling) or corrugator (frowning) muscle on command. The study also showed that such responses rarely occurred during non-lucid REM sleep, strengthening the interpretation that these answers were intentional, meaningful, and generated inside the dream state.
A recent Science news story titled, “Scientists entered people’s dreams and got them ‘talking’” (2021), takes these research findings out of the lab and into public view. The article highlights the same incredible breakthrough Dr. Torres-Platas described. Researchers were able to ask sleeping participants questions and get correct answers as they did so, by using eye movements or facial twitches. What I found striking in the coverage is how much it stressed the immediacy and surprise of the results. Showing the communication almost like reaching someone through a thin veil rather than awakening them. But rather than delving into more technical aspects like the details about polysomnography or the experimental controls, the article described the event as one of the biggest changes to our understanding of dreaming, consciousness, and memory. To glimpse the public response via this news piece made clear just how potent and incendiary the study is. It served as a reminder that science doesn’t live just in academic journals — scientific breakthroughs form the framework through which society also imagines the mind, sleep, and even the boundaries of consciousness and the outside world.
Dr. Torres-Platas emphasized how these findings deepen our understanding of what REM sleep actually is—a state far more cognitively capable than we once assumed. The study also showed the way external cues could intermingle with the content of a dream. For some dreamers, the questions appeared to have arrived from devices within their dream, such as a radio or phone, while others sensed the cues as something external to themselves that was penetrating the dream world. After waking up people often forgot parts of the exchange. This included remembering the incorrect math problem or believing they answered differently from what the physiological responses suggested. This mismatch underscores a central point of the paper: dream reports after waking are unreliable, and real-time communication could revolutionize how we study dreams, memory, and consciousness.
As a senior majoring in Biology on the pre-med track, I found this work especially fascinating because it expands the boundaries of what the sleeping brain can do. Throughout my coursework we were always taught that during sleep the brain’s function is to store information learned throughout the day and is more on reserve mode rather than functional. The idea that someone can maintain working memory, interpret sensory information, and follow instructions during REM sleep challenges our assumptions about consciousness and cognition. Dr. Torres-Platas’s presentation highlighted the potential future uses of consciousness including research on creativity and memory development as well as assistance with nightmares or trauma-infused dream states. This research changed the way I perceive REM sleep, turning it into active, dynamic cognitive space instead of an inactive and disconnected, passive state. Interactive dreaming reminds us that the brain might be more accessible and capable when we sleep than we ever imagined.
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