Dreams have been studied extensively and experts are still trying to understand why we have them, how dream scenarios are created, and whether sleep benefits brain function.
But remembered dreams are often full of forgotten details and distortions, so Northwestern University experts wanted to talk to people as they dreamed in real time, to learn more about why dreams happen and how they can be useful for to mental function.
Scientists tried to talk to people during lucid dreams. Despite lucidly dreaming, people report that they are aware that they are dreaming, and often say that they are able to direct or manipulate the content of the dream to some extent.
In separate experiments conducted in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, scientists studied 36 people with varied experiences of lucid dreams, establishing two-way communication between subjects and asking questions through sensory stimulation, including tactile, audible noises. and flashing lights.
“We presented questions to individuals in the midst of lucid dreams and they were able to answer with eye movements or muscle contractions,” added Karen Konkoly, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern and one of the authors of the article. he told CNN by email.
The researchers found that dreamers could follow instructions to make simple mathematical equations, answer “yes-no” questions, and differentiate between tactile and auditory visual sensory stimuli.
“This shows that it is possible to correctly perceive external stimuli and perform the necessary operations to respond, all while stopping sleeping,” Konkoly added.
The teams found evidence of two-way communications between researchers and patients belonging to all categories of participants, which included experienced lucid dreamers, healthy people trained to dream lucidly with minimal experience, and narcolepsy patients.
“Our article showed specific results from several examples of the 29 different times we received a correct answer to a question from a dreamer,” Ken Paller, director of Northwestern’s Cognitive Neuroscience Program, told CNN. who added that there were also many cases in which communication attempts were unsuccessful. Of the 158 two-way communication attempts during REM sleep, 18.4% produced correct responses, Paller told CNN.
REM, which means fast eye movement, is the stage of sleep we dream of and information and experiences are consolidated and stored in memory.
“We only needed the findings of a handful of people to convincingly demonstrate that two-way communication is possible, which was our main conclusion. We showed that it can even happen in people with minimal prior experience with lucid dreams,” he said. he said in an email. .
“Our results showed that dreamers could understand questions correctly, contain information in working memory and manipulate information (as in mathematical calculations) and express their answers consistently.
“In this way, we have acquired knowledge about the cognitive skills that can be engaged during a dream. In this way, more research in this line we hope will reveal more about how to dream conscious experiences and how they may differ from the conscious experiences of wake up, ”he said.
Researchers say their methods could be used for more research on memory, nightmare therapy, spiritual development and problem solving.
The research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.