Lucid dreaming may be defined as the conscious awareness that one is dreaming while dreaming. Instead of incorrectly assuming that one is awake, the dreamer gains insight about her or his real state of consciousness. Lucid dreaming is rare and evanescent, which probably accounts for lingering doubts about its veracity and for its marginalization in science. The purpose of this paper is to...
Recent findings link fronto-temporal gamma electroencephalographic (EEG) activity to conscious awareness in dreams, but a causal relationship has not yet been established. We found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences ongoing brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams. Other stimulation frequencies were not effective, suggesting that...
In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its...
The current study focused on the distribution of lucid dreams in school children and young adults. The survey was conducted on a large sample of students aged 6-19 years. Questions distinguished between past and current experience with lucid dreams. Results suggest that lucid dreaming is quite pronounced in young children, its incidence rate drops at about age 16 years. Increased lucidity was...
Dreaming and waking are two brain-mind states, which are characterized by shared and differentiated properties at the levels of brain and consciousness. As part of our effort to capitalize on a comparison of these two states we have applied Edelman's distinction between primary and secondary consciousness, which we link to dreaming and waking respectively. In this paper we examine the...
The discussion between J. Allan Hobson and Michael Schredl covers a broad variety of topics that are still“hot” in dream research. The starting point is the continuity hypothesis of dreaming which is complemented by AllanHobson’s theory of protoconsciousness. Whereas there is no disagreement that waking life is reflected in dreams, thediscussion evolves around discontinuity, i.e., how dream...
Models of dream analysis either assume a continuum of waking and dreaming or the existence of two dissociated realities. Both approaches rely on different methodology. Whereas continuity models are based on content analysis, discontinuity models use a structural approach. In our study, we applied both methods to test specific hypotheses about continuity or discontinuity. We contrasted dream...
In this essay, we develop our working hypothesis that consciousness in primates and humans is a state-dependent commodity that has at least two expressions. Waking and dreaming are two such states that differ in conscious awareness. In both states, we are perceptive and emotional. Whereas in dreaming, our thoughts are delusional, however, waking consciousness potentiates volition and...
STUDY OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study was to seek physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a dissociated state with aspects of waking and dreaming combined in a way so as to suggest a specific alteration in brain physiology for which we now present preliminary but intriguing evidence. We show that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like...
Neurobiologists and cognitive scientists are engaged in new efforts to establish the brain basis of consciousness. Progress in brain imaging and in quantitative EEG recording in humans and in unit recording in animals have all contributed to this progress. But progress has been limited by the relative poverty of the paradigms used in these studies, many of which do not take subjective...
Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers....