Lucid Dreaming: The Bonkers World Inside Our Minds

Summary

Science Vs: Lucid Dreaming — The Bonkers World Inside Our Minds

Hosted by Spotify Studios

---

Introduction to Lucid Dreaming

In the episode titled "Lucid Dreaming: The Bonkers World Inside Our Minds," hosted by Wendy Zuckerman, Science Vs delves into the fascinating realm of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming, often described as having "superpowers" within dreams, allows individuals to recognize they are dreaming and, in some cases, control the narrative of their dreams. Wendy opens the discussion with vivid personal accounts from listeners who have experienced the exhilarating sensation of flying and exploring fantastical landscapes in their dreams.

Notable Quote:

• Blythe Terrell [00:02]: “I felt like I’d unlocked something, like, super magical. Then I really did have the sensation. I was like, this feels to me like what it would feel like to be flying in the sky.”

---

Understanding Lucid Dreaming

Wendy explains that lucid dreaming isn't merely daydreaming but a profound experience where the dream feels genuinely real. Unlike simple imagination, dreamers engage all senses—hearing, smelling, and even tasting within their dreams. This immersive quality makes lucid dreaming a compelling tool for personal exploration and mental health.

Notable Quotes:

• Wendy Zuckerman [01:13]: “It's not like closing your eyes and imagining that you're flying or doing whatever, you're really there.”
• Rose Rimmler [01:27]: “It feels so real. You're like, how is this possible?”

---

Personal Journeys and Mental Health Applications

The episode highlights personal stories, such as Archer's journey with gender identity, where lucid dreaming played a role in his self-discovery and healing process. Archer, a trans man, used lucid dreaming to confront his feelings and eventually realized that certain desires, like having a penis, were no longer essential for his well-being.

Notable Quotes:

• Archer [02:20]: “So in a lucid dream, I decided to summon a penis. And then the penis appeared. I made one in a dream.”
• Archer [03:07]: “That's one part of a healing process for me. And now I'm in a place where like, oh, actually now I don't really want a penis anymore.”

Beyond personal growth, lucid dreaming is explored as a potential method to improve mental health, overcome fears, and understand consciousness.

---

Techniques to Induce Lucid Dreaming

Wendy introduces Dr. Denham Adventure Heart, a psychologist from Brisbane, Australia, who conducted extensive research on inducing lucid dreams. Dr. Denham's study involved over 350 participants and tested various methods to increase the frequency of lucid dreams.

1. Reality Testing: Commonly recommended but surprisingly ineffective according to Dr. Denham's study. This technique involves performing actions like trying to inhale with a closed mouth or poking a finger through the palm to recognize dream states. However, the study found no significant improvement in lucid dreaming frequency through reality testing.

   Notable Quotes:

   • Wendy Zuckerman [11:15]: “Reality testing didn't seem to really make that much of a difference.”
   • Dr. Denham [12:01]: “It's not even like doing it... it just didn't actually seem to matter that much.”

2. Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD): Dr. Denham discovered that MILD significantly increased lucid dreaming rates. This method involves waking up after five hours of sleep, recalling the previous dream, and repeating a mantra such as, “Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I'm dreaming.” Participants practicing MILD were three times more likely to experience lucid dreams.

   Notable Quote:

   • Dr. Denham [13:00]: “In Denham’s study, people were roughly three times more likely to have a lucid dream after doing this.”

---

Technological Aids and Their Efficacy

The episode discusses various technological interventions marketed to enhance lucid dreaming, such as:

• Galantamine: A drug that prolongs REM sleep but comes with side effects and is typically used alongside techniques like MILD.

• Lucid Dreaming Masks: These devices claim to use light or sound cues to prompt lucidity but lack substantial scientific validation.

Notable Quote:

• Wendy Zuckerman [19:00]: “Very few have actually been tested or shown to work.”

---

Scientific Exploration: Brain Activity During Lucid Dreams

Wendy explores the neuroscience behind lucid dreaming with insights from Dr. Bashak Turka, a cognitive neuroscientist. Researchers use a "bat signal" method, where lucid dreamers signal their awareness by moving their eyes in specific patterns, detectable by sensors. This breakthrough allows scientists to study brain activity during lucid dreams.

Key Findings:

• Prefrontal Cortex Activation: Unlike regular dreaming, lucid dreaming requires enhanced activity in the prefrontal cortex, the brain region associated with self-awareness and decision-making.

• Hybrid State of Consciousness: Lucid dreaming represents a unique state between wakefulness and non-lucid sleep, with more complex and rapid brain activity without fully waking up.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Bashak Turka [24:22]: “Lucid dreamers will come into a lab and if they are having a dream that they’re aware of, a lucid dream, they can send us a signal.”
• Rose Rimmler [32:53]: “In our study, what we see is that your brain activity is more complex, more rich, and more rapid compared to when they were not lucid.”

---

Challenges and Limitations

Despite the allure of controlling one's dreams, the episode addresses several challenges:

• False Awakenings: Instances where individuals believe they've woken up and attempt to lucid dream within a dream, leading to confusion and disrupted sleep.

• Emotional Impact: While some find lucid dreaming beneficial for mental health, others, especially those with PTSD, may experience increased anxiety.

• Learning Curve: Achieving consistent lucid dreaming requires patience and persistence, as initial attempts often result in waking up prematurely or failing to maintain lucidity.

Notable Quotes:

• AC [38:24]: “The state of the brain is firing in when you're in a lucid dream. It's like a tightrope walk between normal waking consciousness and normal non lucid dreaming.”
• Wendy Zuckerman [40:57]: “Knowing this is a dream, it's not real. That isn't necessarily that helpful. In fact, in a survey including more than 30 US veterans with PTSD who could lucid dream, only three said that they felt relieved to know that they'd been dreaming. Many just felt anxious about it.”

---

Applications in Therapy and Overcoming Nightmares

The episode explores how lucid dreaming can be harnessed to address nightmares and trauma. Psychologist Brigitte Holzinger used lucid dreaming techniques to help patients facing terrifying dreams, enabling them to confront and alter the narrative within their dreams.

Notable Quotes:

• Brigitte Holzinger [40:23]: “With a lucid dream you can do things, change it, or transform it.”
• Archer [40:57]: “I’m dreaming, I would be stupid if I would stop this or change it. It's much better than every James Bond movie I've ever seen.”

However, the evidence remains mixed, with some studies suggesting benefits while others highlight the complexities and potential for increased anxiety.

---

Final Insights and Personal Experiences

In a heartwarming conclusion, Wendy and her colleagues, including Blythe Terrell and Rose Rimmler, embark on personal attempts to induce lucid dreaming. After a week of persistent effort, Blythe successfully experiences a lucid dream, sharing her vivid encounter of her ponytail detaching—a clear, symbolic sign of dreaming.

Notable Quotes:

• Blythe Terrell [44:10]: “I just had a lucid dream. I just did it. I was just having a nap and I just went to sleep.”
• Wendy Zuckerman [44:15]: “This is a dream. And then I put the ponytail down on the bed and I just felt it like how everyone. You just feel.”

---

Conclusion

Science Vs effectively navigates the intricate landscape of lucid dreaming, balancing personal anecdotes with scientific research. While lucid dreaming holds promise for personal growth and therapeutic applications, it also presents challenges that warrant further exploration. The episode underscores the enigmatic nature of consciousness and the ongoing quest to understand the depths of the human mind.

For more detailed insights and scientific references, listeners are encouraged to visit the show notes and explore the extensive citations provided.

---

Produced by Wendy Zuckerman, with contributions from Rose Rimmler, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Joel Werner, and Akedi Foster. Edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Music by Bobby Lord and others. Listen to Science Vs on Spotify or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Whoa.

[Blythe Terrell]

This is incredible. And I, like, flew around in, like, big loop de loops. I'm up high. I'm looking down at the trees. I'm feeling the wind in my hair and just totally going for it. I felt like I'd unlocked something, like, super magical. Then I really did have the sensation. I was like, this feels to me like what it would feel like to be flying in the sky.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science versus Today on the show, we're pitting facts against flying as we swoop into the world of lucid dreaming. There are people that have a superpower where they know that they're dreaming and sometimes can even control what happens next. And in their dreams, people all over the world are saying, okay, great, let's fly.

[Archer]

And that's what I did. I was just flying up and down the staircase.

[Denham]

I found myself flying through a beautiful landscape, I guess similar to New Zealand.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And the insanely, almost magical thing about lucid dreaming is that people who do this will tell you that it feels real. It's not like closing your eyes and imagining that you're flying or doing whatever, you're really there.

[Rose Rimmler]

It feels so real. You're like, how is this possible? It feels so real and like, you.

[AC]

Can hear, you can smell, you can even taste, you know? I've had lucid dreams where I've just gone to a banquet and just tried all the different foods on the table. I could also have superpowers and go on epic missions into outer space. And it was just this, like, playground in your own mind.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

A playground to be whoever you want to be. And for some folks, this isn't just a bit of fun. They're also trying to use lucid dreaming to improve their mental health, overcome fears, and to understand themselves better. That's how my friend Archer used lucid dreaming. He's the guy going, woo, woo, flying down the staircase. Archer is a trans man. He wasn't born with a penis, and for years now, he wished that he had one.

[Archer]

So in a lucid dream, I decided to summons a penis. And then the penis appeared. I made one in a dream.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

How did it feel?

[Archer]

A bit underwhelming. So I tried it out in a dream. I used it in a sexy way, and it was like, this is fine. But it wasn't amazing. You know, not this great thing that I needed to complete my body. And then I would be happy, healthy guy out in the world.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

How big was this for you?

[Archer]

How big was this?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

How big was the moment Arg.

[Archer]

That was one part of a healing process for me. And now I'm in a place where like, oh, actually now I don't really want a penis anymore. That's just for me. Obviously it's really important for some people.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Have you since practised lucid dreaming for any other kind of sexy dreams?

[Archer]

Yeah, I mean, I'm only human.

[Rose Rimmler]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is a magical power you have. So today on the show, we are going to teach you how to lucid dream. That's right. Scientists have studied the best way to get this superpower and we will reveal their peer reviewed secrets. We'll also explore how researchers are trying to harness the strange powers of lucid dreaming to help people through trauma and depression and to crack these huge scientific mysteries like what is consciousness and what exactly goes on in all of our heads when we're asleep. When it comes to lucid dreaming, there's a lot of let's fly and then there's science. Science versus lucid dreaming is coming up just after the break. This episode of Science Versus is brought to you by Ford. There are few pickups more iconic than the F150. And the 2024 F150 Lightning truck is no exception. With an EPA estimated range of 320 miles with the available extended range batter, it's the only EV that's an F150. Visit Ford.com to learn more. Excludes Platinum models. EPA Estimated Driving Range based on full charge. Actual driving range varies with conditions such as external environment, vehicle use, vehicle maintenance, high voltage battery age and state of health. There's no better feeling than a personal win. And the State Farm personal price plan can help you do just that. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Welcome back. Today we are flying into the dream world, or at least we're trying to. And if we want to channel lucid dreaming to improve our lives, the first step is to learn how to do this. Because for many of us, it doesn't come easy. I mean, studies find that around half of us will have had at least one lucid dream in our lifetime. But not all lucid dreams are created equal. For me, the best I've gotten is that I'll realise I'm dreaming for a moment and then I either wake up or go back to regular sleep. And my Lacklustre lucid experience is pretty common. One study reckoned that only around a third of people who lucid dream can manipulate what they're doing in their dreams. So how can we up our game and learn how to become gods in the dream world? For this, we need Dr. Denham adventure heart. A psychologist in Brisbane, Australia. Denham lives with sciatica, which can cause this nasty pain throughout his body. And several years ago, things got really.

[AC]

Bad when it was at its worst. It was so limiting that it was. You know, it was. It was very difficult and painful to even take the bins out at night.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

There were some days when he could barely get out of bed. Well, unless he was lucid dreaming. Every now and then, Denham would find himself in a lucid dream, and there he could escape his illness.

[AC]

I could do anything, you know, I could. Not only could I get up and run and, you know, explore and go to new worlds and whatever my imagination could conjure, it actually really helped my quality of life because it gave me something to be excited about.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The problem was that Denham couldn't play in this playground very often. He'd go to sleep, and night after night, no running, no new worlds, and he'd wake up still stuck in bed, in pain. So Denim decides that he's going to train himself to get better at lucid dreaming, and he gets really into this thing called reality testing or reality checks. And these are huge in the lucid dreaming world. I mean, just ask Christopher Nolan about it. It was an inception. So to understand how this could work, it's helpful to know that often people will spontaneously have a lucid dream because they'll be stuck in the middle of a dream, and something really weird will happen that makes them think, what? This has to be a dream. And voila, they're lucid. And so reality testing is all about trying to hack that process. So here's what Denim would do while he was awake. He'd close his mouth tightly and then try to inhale through his mouth. Wait, I want to try it. So you got your mouth closed? Yeah.

[AC]

And then try to inhale.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[AC]

With your lips closed. And. And it doesn't work. Right.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

If you think you're doing this, you're actually breathing through your nose. So the fact that you can't do it tells you that this is not a dream. You are awake and listening to this podcast. But Denham had read that in dreams, you can breathe through a closed mouth, and that was true for him.

[AC]

It almost always will feel different. You can feel this Sense of closed lips. But at the same time, you can feel the air just entering your lungs and breathing in through your mouth at the same time.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Really?

[AC]

Yeah, it's really bizarre.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Another super popular reality test is trying to poke your finger straight through your palm. Obviously while you're awake. It doesn't work. But in the dream world, people say that your finger does go through your palm. And so the idea here is that you will do these reality checks tons of times throughout the day. And because most dreams are reflections of the stuff that we're doing throughout our day, you hope that then in a dream, you will also do a reality test. And when you feel that air moving through your closed mouth or you see your finger slip through your palm, then you'll realize this is a dream and you'll be lucid.

[AC]

And so it's almost like trying to prime yourself to accidentally discover that you're dreaming. You realize, ah, I'm in a dream. That's the moment of lucidity.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So Denim is sick at home, and he's doing these reality tests a lot.

[AC]

Oh, geez. I went pretty overboard with it. I probably was doing it hundreds of times a day at some of those periods.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But it was strange because he wasn't having that many lucid dreams. And so was it frustrating?

[AC]

Super frustrating. I know how amazing these experiences are, and I know that I can access them, but they're just not coming as often as I would like. So it was incredibly frustrating.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So Denham starts thinking, what's going on here? Is it just me and being a scientist? He decides to study it. He sets up an experiment recruiting more than 350 people from all around the world, making this the largest study I could find on inducing lucid dreams. To get a baseline for seven days, everyone would record how many dreams they were having and how many of those were lucid. Then Denham puts everyone into different groups. Some are told to practice reality testing. They do it for seven days, and guess what?

[AC]

Reality testing didn't seem to really make that much of a difference.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's very interesting. Cause even I have spoken to quite a lot of lucid dreaming academics and asked them all, how should I do this? And they've all said, you should try reality testing. Like it's so embedded in the zeitgeist around lucid dreaming. And yet your study found it actually didn't work.

[AC]

Oh, it was very surprising because like you said, this is like the common wisdom is do reality testing, and the more the better. And it's not even like doing it. 100 times is better than 10. It just didn't actually seem to matter that much. And so it kind of goes against the grain of what most people will tell you.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Other, smaller studies have found this too. On average, we can't see a statistical link between reality testing and having a lucid dream. And one reason for this could be because reality tests can fail in that even in your dream, you still can't put your finger through your palm, which makes perfect sense. We know that dreams are super subjective, unlike what you might read on a lucid dreaming Reddit post. There's no physics or biology in the dream world. That means your hands are made of putty. But in Denham's study, he was testing other lucid dreaming techniques as well, and he did find something that worked. It's called mnemonic induction of lucid dreams. And in Denham study, on average, about one in six times that people tried this method, they had a lucid dream. One in six. Wow. That's a pretty good rate, right?

[AC]

It's a very good rate.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Here's what you've got to do. You set your alarm clock.

[AC]

Yeah. So it goes off at about five hours after you've gone to sleep.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's rubbish. Five hours.

[AC]

Yeah. Look, it's a bit of a necessary evil.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Unfortunately, you're waking up at around 4 or 5am because you're trying to catch yourself in REM sleep, which is where most of us have our lucid dreams. Okay? So once you wake up.

[AC]

Imagine yourself being back in a dream, ideally the one you were just in. Imagine yourself walking around noticing something like a pink elephant or something strange.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So you're trying to remember the dream that you were just in. You're visualizing yourself being back there. And what you're doing is trying to notice something unusual that might make you realize, hey, I'm dreaming. And as you're awake, repeat this mantra. Next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember that I'm dreaming.

[AC]

You keep doing it until you really are feeling into that intention, that next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember that I'm dreaming. Like that. That strength of intention's got to be strong. Once that's set, then you just go back to sleep as normal.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

In Denham's study, people were roughly three times more likely to have a lucid dream after doing this, compared to that week where they weren't doing anything special. And other studies have found that this technique works as well as a little tip. If you can go back to sleep quickly, within five minutes after doing all the mantra stuff, you up your chance of having a lucid dream even more. More. Plus, the people in Denham's study who had never really tried lucid dreaming before had a similar success rate to those who were more experienced.

[AC]

So it shows that even beginners can learn this quite quickly.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Do you think that everyone can have a lucid dream, like, if they really put their mind to it? Do you think we're all capable of this?

[AC]

I don't know for sure, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say there probably are some people that are could spend a lot of time on this and still not be able to lucid dream. But I would say for most people, it's a learnable skill.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

A learnable skill.

[Blythe Terrell]

You say, next time I'm dreaming, I will remember. I'm dreaming. Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember. I will remember I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming. In Denham's research, people who were far from lucid dreaming ninjas could learn this in just one week. So my editor, Blythe Terrell, senior producer of Rose Ribler and I, we wanted to fly. Actually, for Rose, she had a very particular dream that she wanted to conjure up.

[Blythe Terrell]

You know, sometimes to relax, I imagine that I've become very, very small and I'm like the height of a blade of grass, and I get to walk around and sit on a mushroom like a toadstool and use a dandelion as a umbrella and that kind of thing. So it'd be kind of fun if I could do that in my dream. And then it would be really vivid and would be more real than just my awake imagination.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, wow, that's so cute, Rose. So I explained how we were going to do this, that we'd wake up five hours after going to sleep. We would try to remember the dream we were just in. We'd think about all the weird stuff that obviously makes it a dream, and then we'd say the mantra. It should take 5 to 10 minutes.

[Blythe Terrell]

5 to 10 at 4 in the morning or whatever. Yeah, man. You guys have your work cut out for you. I'm glad I can already do this. So you are just here to brag? Confirmed. Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Astute ears listening to this podcast might notice that Blythe was one of the voices you heard at the start of the show. She was flying in a lucid dream, doing those big loop de loops. But Blythgart do this very often, so she wants to see if she can supercharge her superpower. And rose and I are going to find out if we can control things in our dreams for the very first time.

[Blythe Terrell]

I'm excited. I'm pumped. How are you feeling, Wendy?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I am not optimistic at all. In fact, for me. For me. But I wish I. But I really tried to have a positive attitude. All right. Make back in a wake. Give ourselves awake.

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. This is day one of the lucid dreaming experiment. Okay. I just woke up. I don't remember what my dream is. Was. Okay, but. So I'll try to remember a different dream. I, like, can't remember any dreams.

[Blythe Terrell]

I actually woke up during a dream where I was covered in ticks, like, making these huge abscesses on my legs. It's really gross.

[Denham]

Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Next time I dream, I will remember I'm dreaming.

[Blythe Terrell]

Did try. Did the mantra, but no outcome.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Well, spoiler alert. It didn't work. I did not. Lucid dream day. Whatever. It didn't work. It didn't work. Another flop today.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It sucks.

[Blythe Terrell]

It's not for me.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So it's not going great, But I'm not giving up. I'm too curious. I want to know what it feels like to walk around inside my own mind. And soon I start looking around online for things to help me. There's this drug that people talk about called galantamine. It sounds like something out of lord of the rings, but we think it keeps you in rem for longer than normal. And researchers actually found that it can up your chance of having a lucid dream. But it's only really been studied by getting people to take the drug when they wake up at stupid o'clock anyway, while they're doing the technique that we're already doing. Plus, the drug has some side effects, so forget it. There are also masks that you can get for sometimes thousands of dollars, claiming that their lights or sounds can help you unlock the world of lucidity, where everything is possible. End quote. And the idea behind some of these masks is actually really interesting because there is research that shows that if you, for example, play someone a particular sound, like three beeps while they're awake and doing a set of instructions about becoming lucid when they're dreaming, and then you play that same sound when they're asleep, it could cue you to become lucid in that moment. But when it comes to these masks that you can buy online, Very few have actually been tested or shown to work. After the break, we go deep inside the brain to find out how people can control things in their dreams. This episode is brought to you by Ford. I'm here with our editor and electric vehicle owner, Blythe.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yes, I'm recording inside my Ford F150 Lightning truck to chat about the Ford Power Promise.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What's that?

[Blythe Terrell]

It is Ford's commitment to getting electric vehicle drivers started with confidence. When you buy or lease one of their electric vehicles, you get a complimentary home charger and standard installation.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow, that's pretty impressive. Which models are included?

[Blythe Terrell]

The Ford Mustang Mach E F150 Lightning and E transit cargo van. You can visit FordPowerpromise.com to learn more.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Must purchase or lease a new Ford F150 Lightning Mustang Mach E or E Transit cargo van vehicle from a participating ford dealer between October 1, 2024 and January 2, 2025 to be eligible to receive a one complimentary Ford charge Station Pro Ford Charger model may vary based on availability with complementary home installation or B2000 bonus cash. No trade in required offer not available to fleet or commercial customers. Complimentary home installation must be performed through qmerit Electrification LLC at a residential location with a dedicated electrical meter. Restrictions may apply based on structural and electrical limitations. Installation must be completed by June 30, 2025 for all offers. Must take retail delivery from an authorised Ford dealer's stock by January 2, 2025. See your Ford dealer for details and terms. Want to shop Walmart Black Friday Deals first Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart Plus.

[Dr. Bashak Turka]

See [e-mail] Time to work on your gift list with Black Friday Deals at the Home Depot right now, get a select tool from top brands like Ryobi and Milwaukee for free. When you buy a select battery kit, choose from reciprocating saws, multi tools, sanders and more. Whether you're stocking up on power for your personal workshop or grabbing the perfect gift for someone else, get Black Friday tool deals delivered from the Home Depot. Limit 1 per transaction exclusions apply. Full eligible tool list in store and online. Fever Cough Congestion when the symptoms keep coming but you've got to keep going, you can rely on Mucinex FastMax All In One. Just one dose of Mucinex Fast Max All In One relieves up to nine cold and flu symptoms, helping you get on with your day. Need cold and flu relief? Get Mucinex FastMax all in one and done relief. It's comeback season. Use as directed.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Welcome back. Today on the show, lucid dreaming. And now let's find out what is happening in our brains as we go on these grand adventures and have a lucid dream. So if you want to know what's going on in someone's brain as they're lucid, you first have to know the moment that that person who is fast asleep has become lucid. But they're asleep, right? They can't tell you. Well, decades ago, researchers worked out a kind of bonkers way to do this, and I talked about it with Dr. Bashak Turka, a cognitive neuroscientist at Paracite University. So she told me that lucid dreamers will come into a lab, tell them.

[Rose Rimmler]

To sleep, and if they are having a dream that they're aware of, a lucid dream, they can send us a signal.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And the bat signal that researchers chose is that the lucid dreamers would move their eyes all the way to the left and then all the way to the right. And they'd do that a couple of times. And all the while, they'd have sensors on their face and head to detect eye muscle movements and to make sure that they were sleeping.

[Rose Rimmler]

And with this idea, which is, for me, it's incredible, they actually managed to show that sleeping people were actually sending the eye signals to tell I'm having a lucid dream.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

With this bat signal, scientists can now probe what's going on in someone's brain while they're lucid. Which brings us to the story of Bashak and a lucid dreamer, who we'll call AC has narcolepsy, which is a sleep disorder where you fall asleep randomly throughout the day. And for reasons we don't fully understand, it's linked with lucid dreaming.

[Rose Rimmler]

So this illness comes with a superpower. You also become a great lucid dreamer. So he was having a lot of lucid dreams, and he would tell us about his adventures in the night.

[A.C.]

I basically spent like, one or two hours of my day lucid dreaming.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is A.C. so for me, it's.

[A.C.]

Like having a second life. So. And I don't usually talk about it because nobody wants to hear about it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Because no one wants to hear about your dream. AC had been involved in some lucid dreaming experiments where he had to do the bat signal to indicate he was lucid. But he wanted to boldly take lucid dreaming science, where no one had gone before. And Bishak and her colleague were intrigued.

[Rose Rimmler]

So we thought, okay, that's great, so we can maybe do a little experiment on you.

[A.C.]

It was in the afternoon, there was a room free and it was like, okay, let's try something.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The plan was simple. Bashak and her colleague would ask him yes, no questions while he was fast asleep but lucid. And he would try to answer them, smiling three times for yes and frowning three times for no. And this is something that for years science had thought was kind of impossible. I mean, sometimes you might ask a partner in the middle of the night, hey, did you take the trash out? And they kind of respond.

[Rose Rimmler]

So they answer and they mumble. They're like. And sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. We call them microarousals. So your brain kind of wakes up for a second.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So if you look at their brain activity, you can see that they're not asleep in that moment, you might have woken them up. We also know that in some of the earlier stages of sleep you are aware of the awake world. But once you are conked out, dead to the world in deep sleep, or rem, you're not supposed to answer questions. So Bashak and her colleague put sensors all around AC's head and face to measure whether he's asleep and what his mouth muscles are doing. Bashak tells ac, nighty night or whatever scientists say to each other. And AC lays on the lab bed and goes to sleep.

[Rose Rimmler]

But I think we were still a bit naive about. We're like, yeah, let's try. But we didn't really, like. We were like, it might work, but it might not work.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

AC is in deep sleep and they could clearly see it on the sensors. But in his dream, he was in an epic battle.

[A.C.]

I was fighting goblins with a sword. Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

He becomes lucid and signals to Bashak using the bat signal.

[Rose Rimmler]

And then we asked him, for example, some questions.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And here's where it gets weird. AC remembers hearing those questions from within the dream.

[A.C.]

It's like a voice from above. You know when you're in the station and there's an announcement, but you don't know where it comes from? Just like that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Baak asks, do you like chocolate?

[A.C.]

Do you like chocolate? And so I smiled three times. Yeah, I like chocolate.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And when Bishak sees the smile, she's not sure it's real.

[Rose Rimmler]

Is he really sleeping? And we were checking the brain activity. He is like, but he's responding, right? And she's like, yeah, yeah, he's responding.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

She asks more questions.

[Rose Rimmler]

Do you watch football? Do you speak Spanish?

[A.C.]

And actually I, I was lucid enough to think about, Okay, I can say a couple of words, but does that mean that I'm speaking Spanish? No. That doesn't make sense. I'm gonna say no. So.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And you're fighting goblins at the same time?

[A.C.]

Yeah. That's quite epic.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And while AC Is having a fine time, Bishak and her colleague were starting to freak out.

[Rose Rimmler]

We were like, do you see what I'm seeing? And she was like, yes. So it was crazy because we were communicating with someone who was dreaming, and we were alone in this room and super excited and, you know, like, half yelling with excitement and half shocked. I think it was one of the scientifically, the best moments of my life, I would say, when I saw that. No, I felt like we discovered a new element. You know, it felt so. Like we were so. I think I smiled for a week, nonstop. I was so happy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And as Bashak is smiling about this discovery in France, other researchers in the U.S. germany and the Netherlands are having similar experiences. In one lab, researchers even asked a Lucid Dreamer, what's 8 minus 6? And while he was asleep and lucid, he responded using the bat signal to indicate 2. After Bashak saw this, she studied it in more lucid dreamers, who, by the way, all had narcolepsy. And she switched up the experiment a little bit. So this time, while they were asleep, they'd hear all of these fake words like ditza and then real words like pizza. And they had to smile three times for a real word and frown three times for a fake word. Now, sometimes they didn't respond at all, but a bunch of times they did, and they answered correctly. But then Bashak noticed something weird. At times, they would answer the question accurately, smile or frown while they weren't having a lucid dream.

[Rose Rimmler]

So we got a bit curious, confused, and excited at the same time.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So then she recruits 22 folks who couldn't lucid dream and also didn't have narcolepsy. And she repeats the experiment.

[Rose Rimmler]

It's crazy. But they were also able to do the task. So they were indeed asleep according to their brain activity, but they were able to respond.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wait, they could? So we could all. So if I went to sleep now and you started asking me, what's a word? Pizza or pizza? Chances are I would respond, there are chances.

[Rose Rimmler]

It's not all the time, but it looks like there are some transient windows of opening, let's say, in which participants respond and then they stop responding.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But the thing is, the lucid dreamers were answering the questions a lot more often.

[Rose Rimmler]

Yes. So if you are lucid dreaming, you tend to respond way more so this.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Tells us that even when people aren't lucid dreaming, there are these small windows where parts of our brain can listen to the outside world around us and can even figure out whether a word is real or made up, which upends what many of us had thought about what was going on while we were sleeping. But there was something particularly special about what was going on in the brain of someone who was having a lucid dream. And that meant that those windows where they could respond to the awake world, they were open more often. And in Bashak's study, she saw an important clue as to why this might.

[Rose Rimmler]

Be when you're lucid. In our study, what we see is that your brain activity is more complex, more rich, and more rapid compared to when they were not lucid.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But not so rich that they woke up.

[Rose Rimmler]

Exactly. It's like, rich, but not so rich.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Other research is helping us to explain how we can even have a lucid dream in the first place. We think a brain area called the prefrontal cortex is important. So normally, when you're dreaming and not lucid, the activity in this part of the brain winds down, which Baak says might explain why weird things can happen in your dream. And that's fine.

[Rose Rimmler]

In a dream, you might have your mom that transforms to a cat, and you wouldn't be shocked. You'll be like, oh, yeah, my mom's a cat now. It's okay. It's because probably your frontal cortex is a bit deactivated, so you cannot. You don't get shocked by these things.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But we think, based on limited evidence, that while people are lucidly dreaming, this critical area of your brain is more.

[Rose Rimmler]

Awake, which allows you to detect anomalies in your dream and be like, oh, this is a dream, because this doesn't make sense. This wouldn't happen in everyday life.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And because lucid dreaming is this hybrid state of consciousness, you know, between being asleep and awake, researchers like Bashak now want to use lucid dreaming to help us understand what consciousness is at all, which remains, according to one review, quote, one of the largest lacunas in scientific knowledge. And to save you the time, I Googled it, and lacuna means unfilled space. And just quickly. Some lucid dreams can actually be felt throughout your whole body. Like, if you ask lucid dreamers to hold their breath in a dream, you can see that air stops flowing through your nose and your blood oxygen levels drop just slightly. In another study, someone had an orgasm in their lucid dream, and researchers could measure more blood flowing to her vagina. So how close are we at sides versus to having what she's having? A week has gone by, and by now have we unlocked this hybrid state of consciousness. Everyone say yay if you've had a lucid dream. One, two, three. Mm. No luck. No luck?

[Blythe Terrell]

No.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Blythe, you actually have this superpower. Has this supercharged, your superpower.

[Blythe Terrell]

Zero percent supercharged. Like, I feel like it is actively draining my will to live.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, no. What's going on?

[Blythe Terrell]

If I wake up in the middle of the night, it is very, very hard for me to go back to sleep. I feel like my brain, once it's awake, it's like, ooh, I'm awake. Would you like to think about 10,000 problems or, like, four weird things? You said yester, maybe five? We sit, we can keep going. Inside my head, I am just like, yeah, no, I was like, I actually do not think this is probably worth it for me. Wendy, how have you. How has it been going for you?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Something strange happened, so let me tell you. I woke up and had been in the middle of this dream where me and my. Where there was this sort of creepy oval. I'll just jump in and spare you the pain of listening to too many of my dreams. So, basically what happened is that I woke up from this dream where a bunch of bonkers stuff is going on. I was getting attacked by bats and just as denim study suggested, I tried to think of all of the wacky things that clearly made this a dream. But in that moment in the middle of the night, I couldn't think of any reason why it was obviously a dream. And then I went back to sleep. The next night, another dream. This time, I'm in a tunnel on the beach, about to drown and I've got my laptop. I wake up and, well, as I told Blythe and Rose and the same thing happens. What about this was clearly a dream and I'm like, well, there could be a tunnel. I could. I could have brought my laptop to the beach. And the second time it happened, I realised maybe I was sleeping the whole time.

[Blythe Terrell]

What do you mean? Like, you think you were trying to lucid dream as part of your dream? Like in your dream you were? Yes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What? I think maybe both times I didn't actually wake up.

[Blythe Terrell]

You just dreamt that you woke up and you dreamt that you tried to lucid dream.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Well, does it still matter if I was asleep the whole time? This is known as a false awakening and curiously, academics have actually written about this phenomenon where your dreams try to convince you that they're actually not dreams. AC Says for him this happens all the time. It's the people in his lucid dreams who tell him this is not a dream.

[A.C.]

Like, what the. This is ridiculous. And I don't understand why the dream tries so hard to convince me that it's reality.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And denim. And Bashak told me that when you think about the neuroscience of lucid dreaming, in a weird way, this kind of makes sense.

[AC]

The state of the brain is firing in when you're in a lucid dream. It's like a tightrope walk between normal waking consciousness and normal non lucid dreaming. But that's a difficult state for the brain to maintain. It almost like it wants to tend towards either just waking up or falling into non lucidity.

[Rose Rimmler]

So maybe it's a way your brain to get back to this, you know, its natural state. But yeah, I don't know. That's very insane that your dream characters would tell you this is real life.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I know, exactly. It's completely insane. Okay, our next question. Can we use lucid dreaming to help us in our lives to be happier people? Well, in one survey, many folks said that having a lucid dream helped them when they were feeling depressed or low. One person said that after a lucid dream, they could have this happy and beautiful experience that would stay with them for days. Another said, quote, it can kickstart your day and keep you warm. And a small study found that the day after people had lucid dreams, on average, they felt less stressed. But be warned, if you're waking yourself up in the middle of the night to try lucid dreaming. We know that messing with your sleep can be bad for your mental health.

[Blythe Terrell]

Just remember, Blythe, inside my head, I am just like.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And curiously, some research has actually found a link between being depressed and having more lucid dreams. We're not sure why, and just quickly, the last thing we want to look into is whether lucid dreaming can help people who have horrendous nightmares, which if this happens to you regularly, it can be awful, making you anxious, having difficulty sleeping. And so there's been this idea for a while now that if you can have a lucid dream, it's like, of.

[Denham]

Course, yeah, with a lucid dream you have a nightmare, you can do things, change it, or transform it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Brigitte Holzinger is a psychologist at the Medical University of Vienna, and she has studied this herself. She's recruited people who were having terrible nightmares about being assaulted, run over by a train, hunted by a monster. She'd teach them how to lucid dream. And she told me that it really did help some of her patients.

[Denham]

Some woke themselves up. Others would turn around and face the monster.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

There was one person who used to have these really frightening dreams of being chased where they had to escape. But after learning to lucid dream, they told Geeta, now that I know that.

[Denham]

I'm dreaming, I would be stupid if I would stop this or change it. It's much better than every James Bond movie I've ever seen.

[Rose Rimmler]

Oh, wow.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Now they could have fun with it. Now that this true realization, it's just a dream.

[Denham]

Yeah, that was all very impressive and.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wonderful, but unfortunately, the evidence that lucid dreaming can help loads of people conquer their nightmares, it isn't so impressive and wonderful. We now have several rather small studies, including Geeters. And there's a new one that's been making headlines that show that after getting people to try lucid dreaming, they do report fewer nightmares. But these studies combine lucid dreaming with intensive therapy, and it's really hard to tease out what's doing the heavy lifting here. Plus, surveys find that even when people become lucid in their nightmares, they often can't change what's happening. So they'll be stuck in this terrifying dream, and just knowing this is a dream, it's not real. That isn't necessarily that helpful. In fact, in a survey including more than 30 US veterans with PTSD who could lucid dream, only three said that they felt relieved to know that they'd been dreaming. Many just felt anxious about it. So even this superpower has its kryptonite, its limitations. But despite that, just like Superman, I still wanted to fly. I switched up the lucid dreaming method a little bit just so I could sleep better, but kept trying. And still the closest I'd gotten is realizing that I'm in a dream, but then getting too excited and waking up before I could do anything. I talked to Geeta about it, who gave me one final piece of advice.

[Denham]

Almost everybody experiences that. You get so exhilarated. Oh, my God, this is now happening.

[AC]

Boom.

[Denham]

And you get up. You wake up.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Denham]

Yes, I know. Of course, I had those as well. To me, it is like learning how to skate. You have to get your balance. Eventually you will be able to keep that balance and ride that wave. Just be patient and persistent.

[Rose Rimmler]

All right? All right.

[Denham]

But it will happen if you keep doing it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Blythe Rose, it's the end of the episode. Everyone say yay. If you had a lucid dream. One, two, three, Yay.

[Blythe Terrell]

Really?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow. It worked. You did. I had one. Oh, my God.

[Blythe Terrell]

Wendy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What? I know. I did it. I did it.

[Blythe Terrell]

Oh, my God.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Do you want to hear the voice message I made straight after? Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, my gosh. I just had a lucid dream. I just did it. I just did it. I just did it. I was just having a nap and I just went to sleep. And in the dream, I was lying on my bed and my entire ponytail came off. And I was looking at it going, ooh. Then I was like, no, wait, this is a dream. Ponytails don't just pop off. This is a dream.

[AC]

This is a dream.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is a dream. And then I put the ponytail down on the bed and I just felt it like how everyone. You just feel. Cause feel things feel so real. And it did. And it did. And it did. And it felt. It felt like my hair. It felt like my hair. All the little strands, all the little. The little bits of hair. It felt like that. It felt like that. I did it. Aw.

[Blythe Terrell]

How did you feel when you woke up?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It felt awesome. It felt awesome.

[Blythe Terrell]

I do love that the lopped off ponytail was enough of the, like, unreality dream world, you know? Like it was. The chopped off ponytail was like, weird enough.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

Not taking your laptop into a cave by the beach, that was par for the course.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But a haircut, that would never happen. That's science verses. This episode has 99 citations. So if you want to read more about the science of lucid dreaming, then you just need to go to our show notes and click on our transcript and there's a link and you'll see all that wonderful science there awaiting you. If you want to tell us about your lucid dreaming experiences, I would love to hear it. You can find us on Instagram. We're @ScienceVS and I'm on tiktokendizing. This episode has been produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Rose Rimmler, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Joel Werner and Akedi Foster. Keys we're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design designed by Sam Baer. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka so Wiley, Peter Leonard and Emma Munger. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr. Karen Conkerly, Dr. Benjamin Bard and Professor Ken Pallor. Also a big thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you are listening on Spotify, then follow us and tap the bell icon so you'll get notifications when new episodes come out. And if you like the show, please give us a five star review. It really helps people find the show. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.