The veil between the world of dreams and reality may be thinner than we thought. In a new one to study published on Thursday, scientists from four countries say they have shown that it is possible to communicate with people while dreaming lucidly. At least sometimes, dreamers were able to answer questions about yes or no and answer simple mathematical problems using facial and eye movements; then some remembered hearing the questions during their sleep.
Cognitive neuroscientist 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 often thought to be crucial for the robust storage of memories created throughout the day. But little is still understood about this process and how dreams could play into it.
“We are researching dreams to learn more about why dreams happen and how they can be useful for mental function during awakening,” Paller told Gizmodo in an email. “As in our other work, we hypothesize that sleep cognition events may be beneficial for memory function.”
One of the reasons it is hard to understand dreaming is that most of us have trouble completely remembering our dreams once we wake up, let alone telling them to others. But Paller and his team have been experimenting for years trying to communicate with sleeping people. His past research has been demonstrated that people can be seen to be influenced by the sounds of the outside world while sleeping. Other research on lucid dreamers (people who claim to have control over their dreams) has suggested that they may signal to external observers through eye movements while dreaming (in 2018, a study suggested that these eye movements could be used to know 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. talking is a common phenomenonmena. But Paller’s team reasoned that it should be possible to have two-way communication between dreamers and awake people. observers and that dreamers should be able to remember them conversations. They also theorized that this communication could be induced and replicated in the right conditions in the laboratory, which would be ideal for future research on sleep. As it turns out, were not the only scientists to have this idea. At least three other research groups from France, Germany and the Netherlands had pursued the same goal.
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“The research groups conducted studies independently and then we discovered that we had done similar studies in different countries. Then we decided to publish all our results together, in a cooperative and non-competitive way “, said Paller.
In total, the study involved 36 volunteers. Some were self-taught experts in lucid dreams, in particular a 20-year-old French participant with narcolepsy that allowed them to achieve REM sleep (the stage of sleep when dreams are most frequent) in the first minute of a 20-. nap minutes. Other participants had no previous experience with lucid dreams, but Paller’s team tried to train all of their subjects to begin a lucid dream when they heard a sound while sleeping. Some teams used spoken words or tones to communicate; others relied on flashing lights or lightly touching the sleepers. Volunteers were also monitored using typical sleep measures such as the EEG, which records brain activity.
Throughout 57 sleep sessions, participants were able to point out that they 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 eye movements or facial contortions of a dreamer almost half. the weather. Overall, of the 158 times they attempted 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 recall the instructions prior to the dreams they had received and that they tried to carry them out. Some also reported hearing the questions they had while dreaming, though not always in the same way. Some reported that they had heard words that clearly seemed to come from outside their current reality, while others said they felt they heard them through a radio or other form of communication within the dream. But there were still times when people did not clearly remember what had happened or when the questions they said they received in the 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 with slightly different methods, could record this fact indicates that it is not just an isolated or misidentified phenomenon, he added.
The team has coined the phenomenon of “interactive dreaming”. And now that they feel they have shown that it is possible, they plan to continue to improve people’s ability to enter that state.
“We are currently exploring the possibilities of conducting experiments in people’s homes instead of in the sleep laboratory. There may be some advantages to doing this, as people will not be influenced by the unusual environment of a sleep lab or the control technology we use, ”said Paller. One of the avenues they explore for future research is to use a smartphone app that teaches people to lucidly dream and improve it; an application that is already available, for any curious spectator.
The hope is that this technique will allow researchers like Paller to get a little closer to breaking the mysteries of our dream lives and how they can affect our waking hours. Over time, this research could even be proactively applied to improve people’s lives by improving their sleep and sleep habits.
“Applications could be developed for problem solving, practicing well-honed skills, spiritual development, nightmare therapy, and strategies for other psychological benefits,” Paller said.