Scientist Tobi Matzek has breathed underwater, explored outer space and even transformed into a dragon – in their dreams. These adventures occurred during lucid dreams, when a person is aware they are dreaming and can often influence what happens. Matzek, at the University of Montreal in Canada, has now found that lucid dreams can be induced in some people via cognitive and multisensory stimulation.
Epic dreaming is leaving people exhausted and distressed Fascinated by the concept of lucid dreams, Matzek and their colleagues recruited 60 adults with no known health conditions who had experienced at least one lucid dream before. The frequency of these dreams varied, with 15 of the individuals experiencing them less than once a year and others having lucid dreams several times a week. The participants came into one of three labs – in Italy, Canada or the Netherlands – on two mornings to nap for up to 2.5 hours.
Immediately before each nap, they were given half an hour of lucidity training. This involved lying in bed with their eyes closed while the ZMax EEG headband, a sleep-tracking device, delivered red-light flashes, played a short melody and administered a few soft vibrations on their forehead. At the same time, a soundtrack guided them to focus their attention on these sensations and asked them to be aware of any differences between the sensations they were feeling during this experience and what they felt during normal wakefulness.
During one of the two naps, these sensory stimulations were repeated when the participant entered the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, when we have our most powerful dreams. Earlier, the researchers taught the participants to move their eyes from left to right to signal that a lucid dream had started and was ongoing. Overall, just over half of the participants gave this signal while the headset readings confirmed they were asleep, usually in the REM stage.
After waking, these participants also reported that they’d had a lucid dream. Kristoffer Appel at the Institute of Sleep and Dream Technologies in Hamburg, Germany, calls the results “remarkable”. People who are terminally ill are commonly reunited with lost loved ones in their dreams and have visions of doors, stairways and light, which are said to help them accept the dying process The lucid dreams were no more likely to occur during the nap in which the sensory stimulations were re-applied during the REM stage.
However, the gap between the participants’ first and last eye signals indicated that they lasted around twice as long in this condition. Longer lucid dreams could be useful because they are being investigated as a way to boost creativity and problem-solving, and to treat nightmares in people with post-traumatic stress disorder, says Matzek. However, only about 55 per cent of people have experienced lucid dreams, and it is unclear if this approach can induce them in individuals who have never had one.
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