Lucid Dreamers: Are we cheating ourselves / Can we do better?

[Piggy]

Last night I did indeed have dreams about specific issues I put in my brain before falling asleep, but I didn't do a very good job of working them out. So before falling alseep again, I considered what I should have done, and put that idea in my brain.

I'll continue this method and see if I get any better at using my dreams for "sparring practice" and finding solutions.

 

[Correa Neto]

The Nova special actually provides support for this view of lucid dreaming.

Sorry, which one?

Lucid dreaming being created as a defense mechanism, my crappy pseudopsychologic interpretation of my own dreams or the possibility of lucid dreaming having diferent effects on diferent individuals?

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

Lucid dreaming is simply being able to differentiate between dreaming and waking states

If that's it, then I don't do it very often, and when I do know in the dream that it is a dream, I never care. Usually it's not really 'me' in my dreams, there's backstory and memories.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

I'm a lucid dreamer, and I still enjoy controlling everything around, playing god, flying, sex anywhere and with any woman, and keeping the "bad guys" in control. As Piggy I don't have nightmares, as soon as something is starting to become nasty I remember it is a dream and then I enjoy Neo like "super powers" so I'm invulnerable and so on.

I absolutely LOVE to see stuff in detail, touch textures, see reflections of light, trace the source of sounds, talking to people wondering how the sensation is clearly like being talking to somebody in the waking life. I also like to play games like touching a hard surface (a window for example) and then attempt to get my hand through it, feeling the sensations.

IMO it is impossible to get bored in a lucid dream, there are so many things to do an explore, if anything I feel sorry for myself because sometimes I'm aware but nothing interesting occurs to me!!

Now, regarding the hypothesis you mention, I couldn't care less.

 

[Symbol]

IMO the prevalence of highly interactive computer games has blurred the lines between lucid and non-lucid dreams.

Playing interactive games gives one dream-like control in real life, so messes a bit with ones ability to differentiate between the waking and dream states in normal life.

 

[madmonk76]

Oddly enough, this brings up a dream I had the other night.
I've been a lucid dreamer for years. I had reoccurring nightmares as a child, and sleep paralysis as a teenager right up until today, although it happens less frequently these days. I rarely have nightmares at all anymore without sleep paralysis being involved, and even then I usually don't feel actual fear because I am lucid.

This brings me back to my dream the other night. In it, everything was normal, then suddenly my son was on the floor, rolling back and forth like he was having some sort of fit, or more appropriately like someone possessed in a horror film. I woke myself up from it immediately, but it was the first time in ages that I felt real fear during a dream.

I suppose it is probably a mother thing, the fear of being helpless to help him, yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Piggy]

Sorry, which one?

It's linked in the first line of the OP.

 

[Piggy]

IMO the prevalence of highly interactive computer games has blurred the lines between lucid and non-lucid dreams.

Playing interactive games gives one dream-like control in real life, so messes a bit with ones ability to differentiate between the waking and dream states in normal life.

Now that's interesting.

I remember one time as a kid -- as a teenager -- I had a dream that was framed like a movie, and when I woke up I realized that such a dream would simply not have happened a few centuries ago.

So I do wonder what this diet of video screens is doing to our kids' dreams.

 

[Piggy]

I suppose it is probably a mother thing, the fear of being helpless to help him, yadda yadda yadda.

Exactly.

It seems like your dream mechanism found a way of overriding the defenses provided by lucid dreaming.

So what do you think?

Do you think I might be right?

Is it possible that by short-circuiting that dream you may have deprived yourself of a kind of "training experience" which dreams are designed to provide?

 

[Bikewer]

Back when the magazine OMNI was being published, they did a number of reader surveys including one on lucid dreaming. Surprisingly, almost a third of the respondents (and this was before easy e-mail polls) said that they experienced lucid dreaming, and could control to some degree these dreams.
I recall reading of an island culture (sorry, can't remember who...) which places a very high regard on dreaming, to the extent that if one harms or insults another in the community during a dream, they must apologize in reality....

My wife has had lucid dreaming ability since childhood, and she maintains that her "nightmares" are when she cannot control the direction of the drearm.

I meant to watch the Nova segment, but missed it. This is an interesting line of research. For some time, most researchers thought that dreams were just our brain's attempt to make sense of random neural firing during sleep, or to incorporate outside sense inputs. We know that dreams often incorporate something that's going on in reality while we're sleeping.
Recently, the idea has been floated to think of dreams as "mental housekeeping", editing extraneous information and keeping others.... (mental disc defragmentation?)

I'll have to try to catch the Nova segment in re-runs.

 

[kellyb]

A very interesting finding was that children tend to have primordial nightmares -- being chased by wild animals, for example -- but as we grow up our nightmares become less generic and primitive, and more specific to modern adult life.

Just to comment on this...
I don't think that was so much a "finding" as it was one researcher's speculation. It might have a very small kernel of truth in there , but I seriously doubt "evolution has hardwired children to have nightmares about wild animals". It's more likely, IMO, that children's stories often feature scary wolves and bears and that's why animals turn up in kids' nightmares more often than they do in adults.
My anecdotal evidence: I've never read my kid a scary animal story, and all of his nightmares have either been about skeletons or Darth Vader.

 

[Piggy]

I don't think that was so much a "finding" as it was one researcher's speculation.

Good point. Although I think it falls somewhere in the middle.

It does seem to be this researcher's finding. Whether it's representative, however, is another matter entirely.

 

[Hokulele]

This is mildly off topic, but the part of the Nova episode I found most interesting was that people who awoke during REM sleep were more positive than those who awoke during non-REM sleep (or was it the other way around?). For those who have lucid dreams, can you tell the difference between REM and non-REM dreams as they are happening? If so, would it be possible to let one set play out and the other not?

I have had lucid dreams and also tend to "turn off" nightmares by waking myself up rather than doing anything in the dream. The only exceptions seem to be anxiety dreams which I tend to let play out.

Interesting question, Piggy. I will have to sleep on it.

 

[Piggy]

This is mildly off topic, but the part of the Nova episode I found most interesting was that people who awoke during REM sleep were more positive than those who awoke during non-REM sleep (or was it the other way around?). For those who have lucid dreams, can you tell the difference between REM and non-REM dreams as they are happening? If so, would it be possible to let one set play out and the other not?

I have had lucid dreams and also tend to "turn off" nightmares by waking myself up rather than doing anything in the dream. The only exceptions seem to be anxiety dreams which I tend to let play out.

Interesting question, Piggy. I will have to sleep on it.

Other way round.

Non-REM dreams tended to be more positive than REM dreams.

The hypothesis put forward in the NOVA feature is that non-REM dreams are focused on honing skills we are learning in our daily lives, and that REM dreams are focused on putting those skills to the test in hypothetical situations.

Therefore, REM dreams tend to be more negative and more often nightmarish.

It's like non-REM dreaming is a day at the firing range where you get to practice in a non-stressful, non-threatening environment, and REM dreaming is more like a war game.

ETA: No, I don't believe there's any way for the dreamer, upon waking, to know whether s/he was having a REM or non-REM dream.

 

[Hokulele]

Thanks, it has been a few weeks since I saw that episode. I still wonder if the non-threatening non-REM dreams are a hard and fast rule and if so, is there any way to tell between the dream types when lucid dreaming. I also wonder if lucid dreamers tend to control REM or non-REM dreams more often.

 

[kellyb]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/dreams/ask.html

Q: Hi, I am 60 years old, and I have had hundreds of lucid dreams over the last 30 years. Often I transition into a lucid dream from an "ordinary" dream. Does your theory incorporate lucid dreams and attempt to account for their occurrence?
Francis Louis Szot, Boca Raton, Florida

A: We don't know how to incorporate lucid dreaming into our models. Lucid dreaming, which involves being aware of the fact that you're dreaming while you dream, appears to be a state between REM sleep and waking. Regions of the prefrontal cortex, which control logical reasoning and executive decision-making and which are normally turned off during REM sleep, appear to be turned back on. This allows some lucid dreamers to gain partial control over the events in their dreams. But whether this would actually impair the normally automatic processing of memories, or instead allow the dreamer to control the memories to be processed is totally unknown. Check back in five years!

Q: Has there been any documented research conducted by reputable sleep study groups concerning lucidity and dream control. I found a great website that goes into some detail concerning this subject. I am curious as to what the experts in the field of dream study think of this idea (i.e. is this for real, or just bunk?). http://www.dreamviews.com/index.php
Thanks.
Anonymous

Q: Does anything physiological happen in the sleeping brain to cause a lucid dream (a dream in which you realize you are dreaming)?
Jon Medders, Fayetteville, Arkansas

A: Lucid dreaming is absolutely real. Steven LaBerge, from Stanford, has been the single biggest researcher in the field (http://www.world-opf-lucid-dreaming.com), although some feel he has become overly committed to its value.

A recent article in the journal Sleep shows that lucid dreaming is accompanied by an increased activation of brain regions that are normally suppressed during sleep and that control rational thinking and executive control. Just such a link had been predicted by many people for years, so these findings support the notion that lucid dreaming represents a brain state somewhere between normal REM sleep and wake

 

[soylent]

Well, that's really the important part. Are we doing ourselves a disservice by doing that? I think we might be.

What exactly is it I'm supposed to learn by pulling out maggots from under my finger nails with plyers, going to work without my pants on and having a motorcycle accident with a moose which then begins stripping flesh from my legs while I try to call for help(I don't even own a motorcycle, let alone a zombie moose)?

 

[Piggy]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/dreams/ask.html

Thanks, Kelly.

I'll have to check out the Web site of the researcher linked in the posted selection.

What I'd be most interested in is how it's possible to train yourself to dream lucidly most of the time. But that'd be a hard thing to study, I'd imagine.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Thanks, it has been a few weeks since I saw that episode. I still wonder if the non-threatening non-REM dreams are a hard and fast rule and if so, is there any way to tell between the dream types when lucid dreaming. I also wonder if lucid dreamers tend to control REM or non-REM dreams more often.

How can a dreamer tell what stage of sleep he/she is in?

 

[Hokulele]

How can a dreamer tell what stage of sleep he/she is in?

I would guess by the type of dream they are having. It sounds like the two are fairly distinct, which is what prompted my question as to whether or not the differences were a "rule" for dreaming. It looks like I will have to look into myself rather than take the lazy way out.