Lucid Dreaming: Psychology and Neuroscience

Have you ever had a dream – or a nightmare – where you knew you were sleeping? Being aware that it is a dream is what defines a dream as lucid and what makes it different from ordinary dreams. See explanation from psychology and neuroscience.

What is a lucid dream?

Hello friends!

Almost all psychology students come into contact, at one time or another, with Descartes’ philosophy and learn the famous saying: “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum). The most dedicated students will read the books The Method Discourse and The Meditations🇧🇷 The first is easier than the second and is, in fact, a book that virtually any student can read without difficulty – unlike other dry philosophy books.

At the Method Discourse, Descartes proposes a method for the elaboration of secure knowledge. And for that, it starts with doubt. But there is no doubt. He proposes that everyone carry out the following experiment: doubt everything, all certainties, even doubt that you have a body, that the senses are as they are. After all, during the night we dream and in the dream we also have sensations that seem real, but are not. What guarantees that the day-to-day sensation is more real, certain and true than the sensation of a dream?

I wanted to mention the beginning of Method Discourse here – if you want to continue knowing how Descartes solves the problem of hyperbolic doubt, I recommend reading the book – to start thinking together about the so-called lucid dreams with the question:

– “What differs a dream from reality?”

– “How to distinguish the sensations of everyday life from the sensations of a dream?”

It is curious that one of the characteristics that distinguish dreaming from waking is the fact that if we are awake, we know that we are awake. If we are dreaming, we don’t know we are dreaming. It turns out that in lucid dreams, we can come to know that we are dreaming…

Like Déjà Vu, lucid dreaming is an experience that not everyone has had. And even those who have had a lucid dream – or a lucid nightmare – will describe experiences that are very different from other people who have also gone through this unusual experience. Some people report being able to change external conditions in a lucid dream. For example, if it is night in the dream and the person wants it to stay during the day, just thinking about staying during the day, the dream comes true and the day is made.

History of the concept of Lucid Dreaming

The first mention in the literature of lucid dreams was made by Frederick van Eeden in 1911. Among other phenomena of lucidity, he described the so-called lucid nightmares, nightmares in which the dreamer knows he is having a nightmare, tries to wake up, but cannot. However, according to researchers, lucid dreams, good dreams, are more common than lucid nightmares: thus, the person knows he is dreaming, enjoys being dreaming and has no desire to wake up.

For psychology, lucid dreaming represents a fantastic topic for research because it touches on questions about consciousness and identity. Can we develop more of our consciousness and will we have awareness 24 hours a day? If the whole dream is in the dreamer’s mind, how does the dream distinguish who the dreamer is from the other people in the dream? Furthermore, by having the ability to distinguish what is real from what is a dream, the person will probably not have a psychotic disorder, as what defines a delusion is the inability to differentiate between reality and unreality, fantasy and everyday life. , the day-to-day of the dream.

But another feature represents an addition to lucid dreams: the dreamer is often able to perform feats that would be impossible in their ordinary life: lucid dreamers describe the ability to fly, to move quickly through space (“just think of a place and we’re already there”). there”), to control the unfolding of external events as if he were the director of a great theater play, to become extremely large like a giant, among other possibilities that would be considered miraculous if they happened in front of him on a Monday.

And what is the explanation for Lucid dreams?

The Explanation of Lucid Dreaming

According to neuroscience and dream medicine research, a lucid dream is not exactly a dream. A dream happens, four to five times a night, in the state called REM (Rapid Eye Movement), rapid eye movement. Lucid dreams, on the other hand, do not happen at the same time of night as usual dreams. They thus represent a neurophysiological transition from the waking state to the dream state, although it takes place in the sleep state.

According to Patrick McNamara: “We now have confirmation that lucid dreaming is associated with reactivation of the prefrontal network during lucidity. In an article published in the journal SLEEP (Dresler M, Wehrle R, Spoormaker VI, Koch SP, Holsboer F, Steiger A, Obrig H, Sämann PG, Czisch M. 2012,Neural Correlates of Dream Lucidity Obtained from Contrasting Lucid versus Non-Lucid REM Sleep: A Combined EEG/fMRI Case Study.Sleep.Jul 1;35(7):1017-20, Dresler et al, were able to collect neuroimaging data from at least one of the four lucid dreamers they studied. By the time the dreamer is in the lucid state, the following brain regions are more activated than they would be in the non-lucid REM state: bilateral precuneus, cuneus, parietal lobes, and the prefrontal and temporal-occipital cortices.”

In this way, the activated areas would prove that there is a substantial difference between the REM state (the common dream) and the state called lucid dreaming (with the activation of the aforementioned areas). Brain imaging would thus demonstrate that lucid dreaming is not a REM phenomenon, although they can start in REM and have elements of REM – such as muscle paralysis. The activation of the cortices in particular helps to explain the consciousness present in these dreams, that is, with the prefrontal and temporal-occipital cortices still functioning, logical thinking and consciousness are not asleep and the subject is therefore able to know who is dreaming.

The Psychology of Lucid Dreaming

Beverly D’Urso, has a master’s degree in Cognitive Psychology, a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence, and has been called the world’s most lucid dreamer. Since childhood, she reports the ability to have lucid dreams. Therefore, she was the experimental subject of several studies carried out by Dr. Stephen Laberge at Stanford University’s Dream Lab and creator of the Lucidity Institute.

In an interview (in English) with Berit Brogaard, she tells more about her own lucid dreaming and the latest research in the field. D’Urso defines lucid dreaming the same way we defined it above, as the ability to know that it is a dream, in a dream: “To have a lucid dream is to know that you are having a dream while you are dreaming.”

For her, it’s not so much about having control over the dream, although having control over the dream’s content is one of the reasons why people want to have a lucid dream. So if lucid dreaming is possible, many people want to know how to trigger it.

D’Urso explains that the best technique is to pay attention to the details: everything you can see, hear, touch, smell, taste. In a dream, details will not be as clear and there may be minutiae out of place, so finding these “flaws” will give the dreamer the clue that he is dreaming. Another way, together with this one, is to create the habit of being attentive, because your mental state will be reproduced in the dream, that is, as you are during the day, it will be during the dream.

One of the goals of people who try to have a lucid dream is precisely the fulfillment of desires. According to the researcher: “In dreams, fantasies are much more vivid. There are many things you can do in a lucid dream that you cannot do in everyday life. You cannot taste fire or fly into the sun or have sex with strangers without potentially serious consequences. But you can do all that in your dreams.”

D’Urso also points out that one of the biggest benefits of having lucid dreams frequently is the ability to stay in the present moment, without guilt or resentment for the past and without hopes or expectations of the future to be happy. As the attention to reach a lucid dream has to focus on the now, with time, this ability becomes permanent and the person manages to live his life intensely, because we are only alive in this second. The past is gone. The future is always a future.

And finally, she argues that there is no potential danger in lucid dreaming and going crazy. After all, to have lucid dreams you need to be aware of the difference between dream and reality. Without this, the experience is not possible. And if the experience is possible, it already excludes by definition the possibility of having a delirium during the day and trying to do things that would be impossible in everyday life.

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