Scientists have identified a new phenomenon that they describe as “interactive dreaming,” where people who experience deep sleep and lucid dreaming are able to follow instructions, answer simple yes-or-no questions, and even solve basic math problems. unload.
In addition to adding a whole new level of understanding to what happens to our brains when we dream, the new study could eventually teach us how to train our dreams – to help us achieve a particular goal, for example, or about a special mental health problem.
There is much about the psychology of sleep that remains a mystery, including the rapid eye movement (REM) phase in which dreams usually occur. Getting responses from sleepers in real time, instead of relying on reports afterwards, could be hugely helpful.
“We found that individuals in REM sleep can communicate with an experimenter and communicate in real time,” said Northwestern University psychologist Ken Paller. “We have also shown that dreamers are able to understand questions, perform working memory operations and produce answers.
“Most people might predict that this wouldn’t be possible – that people either wake up when they ask a question or don’t answer, and certainly don’t understand a question without misinterpreting it.”
The researchers worked with 36 individuals on experiments in four different laboratories. One volunteer had narcolepsy and often experienced lucid dreaming, while the others varied in their experience of lucid dreaming.
During the deepest stages of sleep, as monitored by electroencephalogram (EEG) instruments, scientists interacted with the study participants through spoken audio, flashing lights, and physical touch: the sleepers were asked to ask simple math questions. answer, count flashes of light or physical touches, and respond to basic yes or no questions (such as “do you speak Spanish?”).
Answers were given through eye movements or facial muscle movements that were pre-arranged. During 57 sleep sessions, at least one correct answer to a question was observed in 47 percent of the sessions in which lucid dreaming was confirmed by the participant.
Confirmation of the lucid dream states was done in a blind manner, with the sleeper’s responses having to be approved by several witnesses.
A summary of the experiments. (Konkoly et al., Current Biology 2021)
“We pooled the results because we found that the combination of results from four different laboratories with different approaches most convincingly attests to the reality of this two-way communication phenomenon,” said neuroscientist Karen Konkoly of Northwestern University.
“In this way we see that different means can be used to communicate.”
The subjects involved in the study were usually awakened after a successful response to tell them about their dreams. In some cases, the external input was remembered as being outside or overlaid with the dream; in others they came through something in the dream (like a radio).
In the published study, the researchers compare trying to communicate with lucid dreamers to trying to contact an astronaut in space, and it’s the directness of the responses that make this new approach so exciting.
The research may be helpful in the future study of dreams, memory, and the importance of sleep in putting memories in place. It can also come in handy in treating sleep disorders, and further down the line, it can even provide us with a way to train what we see in our dreams.
“These repeated observations of interactive dreams, documented by four independent laboratory groups, show that phenomenological and cognitive characteristics of dreams can be questioned in real time,” the researchers write in their paper.
“This relatively unexplored channel of communication can enable a variety of practical applications and a new strategy for the empirical exploration of dreams.”
The research is published in Current Biology