The veil between the world of dreams and reality may be thinner than I thought. In a new one study released on Thursday, scientists from four countries say they have shown that it is possible to communicate with people while dreaming lucidly. At least some of the time, dreamers were able to answer yes-or-no questions and answer simple math problems through facial and eye movements; after that, some remembered hearing the questions during their dream.
Cognitive neurologist and study author Ken Paller and colleagues at Northwestern University in Chicago have been studying the connection between sleep and memory for years. Sleep is usually thought to be crucial for the robust storage of memories created during the day. But little is understood about this process and how dreams could play a role in it.
“We’re researching dreaming to learn more about why dreams happen and how they might be useful for mental function during awakening,” Paller told Gizmodo in an email. “As in our other work, we assume that cognitive sleep events may be beneficial to memory function.”
One of the reasons it is difficult to understand dreaming is that most of us have trouble fully remembering our dreams once we wake up, let alone tell them to others. But Paller and his team have been experimenting for years trying to communicate with those who sleep. Their past research has had PROVEN that people can be influenced by sounds from the outside world while sleeping. Other research on lucid dreamers – people who claim to have control over their dreams – has suggested that they can signal to outside observers through eye movements while dreaming (in 2018, a study suggested that these eye movements could be used to tell when a person has entered a lucid dream state).
Many people are familiar with one-way communication with a sleeping person, such as sleepwalking and sleep deprivation. speech is a common phenomenonmena. But Paller’s team argued that it should be possible for two-way communication between dreamers and awakeners. observers and that dreamers should be able to remind them conversations. They also theorized that this communication could be induced and reproduced under the right conditions in the laboratory, which would be excellent for future sleep research. As it turns out, were not the only scientists who had this idea. At least three other research groups in France, Germany and the Netherlands had pursued the same goal.
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“The research groups conducted studies independently and then we found that we did similar studies in different countries. Then we decided to publish all the results together – cooperatively rather than competitively, ”said Paller.
In total, the study involved 36 volunteers. Some were self-taught experts in lucid dreaming, especially a 20-year-old French participant with narcolepsy who made it possible for them to achieve REM sleep (the stage of sleep when dreams are most common) in the first 20 minutes. of minute sleep. Other participants had no previous experience with lucid dreaming, but Paller’s team tried to train all subjects to start a lucid dream when they heard a certain sound while sleeping. Some teams used spoken words or tones to communicate; others relied on flashing lights or light touching of sleepers. Volunteers were also monitored by typical sleep measurements, such as EEG, which records brain activity.
During 57 sleep sessions, participants were able to signal that they had entered a lucid dream by moving their eyes 26% of the time. In these successful sessions, scientists were able to get at least one correct answer to a question through the movements of a dreamer’s eyes or the contortions of the face almost half time. In total, of the 158 times they tried to communicate with a lucid dreamer during these sessions, they obtained a correct response rate of 18% (the most common response, around 60%, was no response). ).
When volunteers were asked about their experiences, some reported that they were able to remember the instructions prior to the dream they had received and tried to fulfill them. Some also reported hearing the questions they received in a dream, though not always in the same way. Some reported hearing words that they clearly felt came from outside their current reality, while others said they felt they heard them through a radio or other form of dream communication. But there were still times when people could not clearly remember what had happened or when the questions they said they had received in a dream did not match the questions they had actually received.
The findings of the study, published in Current Biology, are based on a small sample size, so the findings should be viewed with some caution. But they show that it is at least possible to have two-way communication with dreamers, Paller said. And the fact that different groups of scientists, in different parts of the world and using slightly different methods, have been able to record this indicates that it is not just an isolated or misidentified phenomenon, he added.
The team invented the phenomenon of “interactive dreaming”. And now, when they feel they have shown that it is possible, they intend to further improve people’s ability to enter that state.
“We are currently exploring possibilities for conducting experiments in people’s homes instead of in the sleep laboratory. There may be some benefits to doing this, as people will not be influenced by the unusual environment of a sleep lab or the monitoring technology we use, ”Paller said. One way he explores for future research is to use a smartphone app that teaches people how to dream lucidly and how to improve – an app that is already available, for any curious spectator there.
The hope is that this technique will allow researchers to get a little closer to breaking the mysteries of our dream lives and how it could affect our waking hours. Over time, this research could even be applied proactively to improve people’s lives by improving their sleeping and dreaming habits.
“Applications could be developed for problem solving, well-developed skills, spiritual development, nightmare therapy and strategies for other psychological benefits,” Paller said.