Scientists talked to people in their lucid dreams

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/27/971958260/scientists-talked-to-people-in-their-dreams-they-answered

by sxp • 5 years ago

78 50 5 years ago

Does this mean my staff could be asked to get some work done while asleep?

In all seriousness I look forward to seeing exactly how much we can do while lucid dreaming. Also, what are the consequences? Does it cost you the nights rest? or could this be a life hack for getting more done in a day?

lesquivemeau• 5 years ago

No you are rested as if it were a normal dream. But it's not easy to keep focused on something while lucid dreaming, you will likely forget that you are in a dream and no longer be lucid.

robobro• 5 years ago

You mean no longer be dreaming. People who concentrate too much during a lucid dream wake up.

vicedvin• 5 years ago

I may disagree, as from my own experience and lucid dreamers I spoke to, lucid dream is not a rest state but more of the awake. After lucid dreaming I am as tired as I did not sleep at all, maybe even more.

wahern3• 5 years ago

I've had a productive coding session in a lucid dream at least once. But it was just a small number of lines of code (a few blocks) I was playing around with, and I had been thinking about it all day. The visual and semantic memory was sort of stuck in my mind, consciously and subconsciously. In any event, it was insanely precise (I was editing on a giant terminal screen) and when I woke up I typed in my refactored algorithm verbatim.

But reading text coherently in a dream is, AFAIU, quite uncommon as you suggest. I used to lucid dream regularly and deliberately as an adolescent. I would hesitate to say you can't focus in a lucid dream--consciously focusing on elements of the dream, or trying to shape the dream, is kind of the point of lucid dreaming. (Of course, what you have most control over is yourself.) But, yeah, you can't usually control things in such fine detail for the duration necessary to coherently manipulate it. Reading any non-trivial text in a dream isn't very common, lucid or not-lucid, AFAIU. Though, I would imagine it's more common for people with experience lucid dreaming.

I'm sure some people can read and write as much as they want, but at a certain point on the curve we're probably dealing with people with abnormal neurology. Sort of like how there's memory palaces and other mnemonic techniques, which anybody can learn, and then there's people with Hyperthymesia.

scrollaway• 5 years ago

Speaking from experience, lucid dreaming is not as restful as normal sleep. Furthermore when I was lucid dreaming often, I would get much more regular bouts of sleep paralysis, which only happens to me when my sleep health has severely deteriorated.

ghusbands4• 5 years ago

No you are rested as if it were a normal dream.

Given the sibling comments, this is clearly not a fact. It's best to avoid stating opinion/experience as fact.

ghusbands4• 5 years ago

There are all sorts of things that are meant to happen during sleep, around learning and similar, that are unlikely to be feasible while you're lucid dreaming, so it might impede learning skills, for example.

When I did extensive lucid dreaming I found my brain was making my dreams more and more boring, I'd guess to reduce the chances of me noticing that I was dreaming.

Nowadays, I retain an awareness of when I'm dreaming, and I interrupt dreams when I'm especially fascinated by something in them or don't like them, but I otherwise let them run their course and don't take control.

bemmu• 5 years ago

I had a boss who proudly told us that he likes to deal with work-related issues during his lucid dreams.

I thought that was a profound waste of a rare moment when you can do almost anything at all. Personally I like to fly.

ve55• 5 years ago

paper: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)... "Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep"

throwaway8581• 5 years ago

For example, a typical question would be to ask what is 8 minus 6. A 19-year-old American man was able to respond by moving his eyes left-right, left-right — two times — to signal "2." Researchers asked the question again, and he moved his eyes the same way two times again.

I’d have to read the paper but color me skeptical. Moving eyes back and forth twice while sleeping is not exactly a clear signal of anything.

kthejoker2• 5 years ago

Instantly thought of Clever Hans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

lrem• 5 years ago

This is amazing, underwhelming and not very surprising, all at the same time.

Unsurprising, as it was already known that lucid dreamers can move their eyes... And I think everyone has experienced external stimuli, say an alarm clock, being seamlessly integrated into a dream.

Underwhelming, as this requires people with rare skills and special requirement to achieve just 18% success rate. For a basic task.

Amazing, because obviously the first time something is achieved with rigor, it's opening some hard to predict room to grow. Hopefully this will bring more research and any decade now we'll see practical applications, say dream manipulation to said psychotherapy.

yreg• 5 years ago

requires people with rare skills and special requirement

It's not like one has to be born lucky though. It is possible to learn to lucid dream, or rather to remember dreams.

vimacs22• 5 years ago

I can confirm this. I literally had zero natural aptitude for dreams and when prior to achieving my first consciously induced lucid dream, thought for a long time that I stopped having dreams (in reality I just was not recalling them).

sokoloff2• 5 years ago

On integrating outside stimuli, what I’ve always wondered is how wall clock time relates to time in the dream world.

I have a vivid memory of a dream as a kid where I was a fighter pilot, went through a bunch of dream time as a kid’s idea of what fighter pilots did, was eventually shot down/ejected over water and condemned to drown in the dream. I woke up with my mouth stuffed full of my own blanket to the point which was making mouth breathing almost impossible.

Did I start ingesting the blanket and concoct and experience a long dreamtime dream in 3 minutes? Or did the dream take 45+ minutes and I started ingesting the blanket midway through?

This was probably 40 years ago and I can remember it like it was last week.

ianai• 5 years ago

I don’t know for your memory of course. But I definitely know my brain morphs an ongoing dream to the outside world.

jerrygoyal• 5 years ago

on a side note, people who do lucid dreams, how do you do it?

edgyquant• 5 years ago

I’ve been doing this lately. Basically I read a lot either programming or just browsing forums etc so I dream about a lot of text almost every night. Lately I’ve got to a point where I see some text (in a dream) and try to read it and it’s gibberish. So when I see this text my mind immediately knows that I’m dreaming and im able to “take control” and walk around the dream land. It isn’t anything special and usually I wake up after a few minutes of walking around in confusing land, but this may be because I’ve only just started. I’m not sure why I’m only now beginning to tell this gibberish text, as I wasn’t intending to lucid dream and until it happened I thought it was a myth.

dannyw• 5 years ago

I can read text clearly in my dreams. Many dreams about slack sometimes. Ugh.

xyzzyz• 5 years ago

Many people start lucid dreaming after simply learning that this is a thing and thinking about it. That’s how it happened to me: I simply started getting ideas in my dreams of the sort “hey, this is really weird, maybe this is the lucid dream thing I read about”.

It happens to me regularly now, probably something on the order of 1-2 times a week. However, I usually wake up rather soon after this realization, especially if I attempt to exercise any control over a dream, which makes it not very exciting, to be honest.

bobbyi_settv• 5 years ago

Keep a dream journal. Meaning, when you wake up each morning, immediately write down everything from your dreams.

Everyone says they can't do this because they don't remember their dreams, but if you start trying to do it, you will probably find that when you have just woken up, you remember a little, and as you start writing, more comes back to you. Over days of doing this, you will get better at it.

After doing this for a while, try to recognize patterns, particularly specific things that show up with some frequency in your dreams that are indications you are dreaming. For example, there is someone you went to high school with that you encounter semi-often in your dreams, but never see anymore in real life. If you are talking to that person it means you are dreaming.

Try to brainwash yourself, really drill into your head over and over, that when you see this person, you are in a dream, and you should start trying to activate your mind and be conscious of what is going on. Also, really drill into your mind the idea that if you every find yourself vaguely wondering "am I dreaming right now?" the answer is ALWAYS yes.

With luck, the next time you encounter this situation in your dream, there will be a nagging feeling that there was something you were supposed to remember, and then you'll realize what it is and start to wake up your mind within the dream. After a few times, your mind will start to recognize when it is in a dream and become lucid sometimes without the specific trigger.

This is the technique I read in a book decades ago in my early teens and didn't expect it to actually work, but it did. I don't get there regularly (and never did), but I still get to full on lucid maybe once every month or two and it is amazing. It's so incredible to be able to look at the world around you and realize that everything you are seeing is created by your mind.

It gives a deep appreciation for how powerful your mind is and how much more there is to it than just what you are conscious of, since in the dream your conscious mind feels the same as when you are awake, but you know that all of the seemingly external stuff around you and even people that you speak to are also "you". If your conscious mind and everything that seems external to it are really part of the same connected whole when you are dreaming, could the same be true when you're awake?

Even if this approach doesn't work for you, keeping a dream journal for a while can be super interesting anyway.

FWIW, this was the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805025006/

I haven't seen it in decades, so can't really vouch for it too much. From what I remember, it explained the approach I've outlined above in not much more detail than I just did and most of the rest was filler talking about what dreams are.

barrenko• 5 years ago

At a certain point, you can't really be sure if they're just fake lucid dreams anyways.

enricozb• 5 years ago

Make a habit of asking yourself around once an hour, “am I dreaming”, eventually (for me it took a week) this habit finds its way into a dream.

dorkwood2• 5 years ago

The technique I used when I was younger was blocking my nose and trying to inhale through it at random points throughout the day. If you're dreaming, you'll be able to breathe through a blocked nose. If you turn this into a habit, you'll eventually do it inside of a dream, and become lucid.

The second necessary component is developing your dream recall (it's no use having lucid dreams if you can't remember them). You do this by writing down your dreams in as much detail as possible every morning when you wake up. At first you may only remember a couple of dreams every month, but do this often enough and you'll eventually work your way up to remembering 5-10 dreams every night.

forgotmypw17• 5 years ago

My "sleeping to fullness" technique is time-consuming, but has been effective for me.

I otherwise do not have a natural talent for it, and have done it very rarely.

Here is link to my past comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25248553

Hithredin• 5 years ago

I guess one key part is the need of a regular long night sleep.

With short sleep, one sleep to deep for that.

nextaccountic• 5 years ago

I followed the advice of this page http://www.lucidity.com/ which is mostly what other commenters are saying

First step is to get a dream diary next to your bed to write down any dreams before you forget them (note: you forget dreams faster when you move your muscles, so try to write down without moving too much). In the long term, this makes you greatly improve recalling of dreams, which include lucid dreams. see also http://www.lucidity.com/NL11.DreamRecall.html

After that, you need to develop a trigger to distinguish between dreaming and awake states. One idea is to look at a clock, then look away and look back to it - if you're in a dream the display will be completely different each time. You need to repeat this regularly when you are awake - by habit you will repeat this in your dreams too.

Once you successfully discover you're dreaming, don't get too excited! Being to hasty to do stuff in your dreams will most likely make you wake up. You need to appreciate it calmly. see also http://www.lucidity.com/NL7.34.RU.SpinFlowRub.html

Also, the dream maker in your mind will attempt a number of tricks to make you cease the lucid dreaming and get back to regular dreaming, such as false awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening - it seems that the mind is really invested in having dreams where you're not aware you're dreaming, that you forget as soon as you start your day.

EamonnMR• 5 years ago

Be careful with clocks. I semi-intentionally developed clocks-not-looking-right as a dream test and then, not having thought about it for years, got a hilarious moment of disassociation when our conference room clock was broken and I happened to glance at it and see a totally wrong time.

tokai• 5 years ago

As others have written getting a trigger you regularly practise is key. Some triggers I have used are:

Watches misbehave in dreams, look at it twice to sus it out. Usually the time changes between peeks.

Light switches. They seem to never work in dreams.

Pushing your hand through your chest. This trigger is very easy and quick. Put your fingers to your chest and push against your ribs without look down at your hand. If dreaming the hand will go through without any effort.

Generally our dreaming brains don't seem to deal well with permanence. The trick is to make it a habit to check if you are dreaming regularly, and at some point you'll do it instinctually in a dream and realize that its not reality.

tiborsaas• 5 years ago

Do reality checks regularly while awake. Try telekinesis, jumping (try to defeat gravity), look for your personal dream signs, that's why keeping a dream journal helps.

So I made a tattoo on my hand not to forget to do reality checks. I got used to it and doesn't work :)

bayesianbot• 5 years ago

I really, really like closing my nose (with fingers) and mouth and trying to breath. It takes so little time, can be done anywhere and without anyone noticing and seems to work extremely easily in dreams for me. Lot of the other recommendations I've read are much harder. (As in flying or putting a hand through a wall were hard to do at first even when I knew I was dreaming. Looking at clock multiple times requires a clock. And all look weird if done in public)

So my technique is find some situation I'm in pretty often in both dreams and in real life, and do this check every time in that situation. After a while it's like a reflex and sometimes I even think I'm surely not dreaming and get surprised.

pwm• 5 years ago

I didn't do any specific training nor did I plan to lucid dream, it just happened at a point in my life when I meditated a lot. The realisation, ie. that you are asleep and dreaming but aware, is rather special and you can choose to do whatever you like with it. I had some pretty wild experiences "sitting down and meditating" in my lucid dream :) Sadly these days I don't meditate much and I did not have lucid dreams for a while.

blarg1• 5 years ago

I did it twice ages ago, I noticed I was in a dream after realising things that didn't make sense, I was on a bus to school when in reality it was the holidays.

At the time I was also staying at someone else's house so I had that weird feeling of sleeping under a different roof.

Also the whole time I was on the verge of waking up, I could feel my body and had to be careful not to move it while moving in my dream.

rsaarelm• 5 years ago

Wake-back-to-bed technique, google it. Standard methods of dream recall, dream journal, reality checks during day don't do anything for me. But if I wake up at 3 AM, either with an alarm clock or just psyching myself to do it, stay up for an hour or so and read something to wake my brain up a bit and then go back to bed, there's a good chance I'll have a lucid dream after falling asleep.

thepostman0• 5 years ago

Great, now companies will expect us to reply to messages when we sleep.

fsflover• 5 years ago

Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234614

bongoman37• 5 years ago

It is interesting to me that this is the first time someone has done this in a lab setting. I have lucid dreams and I talk in my sleep a fair amount as well. I used to be a somnambulist as a kid as well, though haven't done that in a long time though I will still kick out occasionally in my dreams.

I have had reasonably long conversations in my sleep. When I was living in the dorms once my roommates were solving a physics problem and I answered several parts correctly leading them to the solution though on waking up I knew I had some conversation but no recollection of the actual problem they were solving. My wife often says I am funny to talk to when I am talking in sleep as in the answers can be wildly creative but getting information out is usually impossible, as in if she asks me a password or something I will deflect rather than give an answer.

frongpik• 5 years ago

Let them ask you "who are you?" and "what's your name?"

emteycz• 5 years ago

I know the answers, but can't really drive my attention. So I might say that I am a train occasionally... But then I'm able to correct myself sometimes!

(All of this is absolutely out of my memory, you have to trust my girlfriend)

jbotz• 5 years ago

My wife is a lucid dreamer, and once there was smoke in her dream and while dreaming she was worried that maybe there was a fire in "the real world", so she called me out loud asked if I smelled smoke... her voice came out strangely muffled, and her closed eyes were doing the REM thing, so I knew that she was dreaming. I told her that there was no smoke and she relaxed and continued dreaming.

So yes, we've had first hand experience that communication between a lucid dreamer and a waking person is possible.

afkqs• 5 years ago

Here's a 8-Step Guide to Lucid Dream for Beginners

https://luciddreamsociety.com/beginners-lucid-dream-guide/

Scientists talked to people in their lucid dreams

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