Journal of Sleep Research
August 1, 2026
Nicola De Pisapia, Erdem Taskiran, Stefano Mastino et al.
Lucid dreaming, defined as the experience of becoming aware of dreaming while dreaming, offers a unique window into a state of consciousness characterised by a blending of the sensory vividness of REM sleep with the self-awareness of wakefulness. While past functional imaging has shed light on the neural activity supporting lucid dreaming, the structural brain correlates of lucid dream...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
August 1, 2026
Clarita Bonamino, Clara Hausen, Matthew D. Sacchet
Consciousness can persist, transform, and dissolve across wakefulness, sleep, and advanced meditation. Despite empirical and theoretical advances within each domain, these states are rarely examined within an integrated scientific framework. An interdisciplinary perspective reveals converging phenomena that challenge binary accounts of consciousness and highlight its graded, dynamic, and...
Consciousness and Cognition
July 20, 2026
Marina Trakas, Ryan Daley
Research on the continuity and discontinuity between the waking and dreaming minds has largely focused on similarities and differences in waking and dream content. The present study expands this debate by examining another dimension: the relationship between the dream self and the waking self at the phenomenal level. Specifically, it investigates how bodily and affective dimensions of dream...
PsyArXiv Preprints
July 10, 2026
Dreaming is a universal phenomenon, yet the ability to recall dream content varies among individuals and most dreams are forgotten quickly after waking up. Such dream amnesia seems paradoxical given the proposed adaptive functions of dreaming. It has been theorized that dream amnesia might serve an evolutionary adaptive function, protecting against cognitive disruptions such as dream-reality...
SLEEP Advances
July 8, 2026
Emma Peters, Xinlin Wang, Johanna Heitmann et al.
Abstract Study Objectives Sensory stimulation during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has been proposed as a method to induce lucidity, yet most approaches rely on distal sensory modalities such as light and sound. We explored whether bodily stimulation targeting the muscle and vestibular systems differentially influences dream incorporation and lucid awareness during REM sleep. Methods 28...
Annals of medicine and surgery (2012)
July 1, 2026
correction
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1097/MS9.0000000000004741.].
PsyArXiv Preprints
June 25, 2026
Sleep-related out-of-body experiences (OBEs) occupy an ambiguous position between sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming. OBEs are often considered part of the vestibular-motor component of sleep paralysis, but they also share features with lucid dreaming, including vivid internally generated experience, heightened awareness, and perceived agency. Here, we examined whether the emotional composition...
Frontiers in Sleep
June 24, 2026
Iñigo Saez-Uribarri
Introduction: The return to normal life following the COVID-19 pandemic was evaluated in terms of anxiety upon awakening, sleep quality indicators, and dream characteristics. Methods: The sample comprised 394 women and 107 men who completed an online self-report questionnaire between August 15, 2022, and December 8, 2022 about their sleep and dream experience from the previous night....
Frontiers in Sleep
June 24, 2026
Adam Haar Horowitz, Karen R Konkoly, Michelle Carr et al.
Targeted dream incubation (TDI) is a highly effective method for eliciting hypnagogic dreams related to specific topics through the presentation of verbal prompts and serial awakenings at sleep onset. In this pilot study, we tested whether TDI at sleep onset can effectively direct dream content in subsequent rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We allowed participants a daytime nap opportunity...
Quality in Sport
June 20, 2026
Arkadiusz Adam Psiuk
Background: Motor learning in competitive sport relies not only on physical practice but also on the offline reorganisation of memory traces during sleep. Waking motor imagery is a recognised ergogenic adjunct, while recent work suggests that mental rehearsal may be extended into the sleeping brain through lucid dreaming, a state in which the dreamer becomes aware of dreaming while remaining...
Current biology : CB
April 12, 2021
Karen R Konkoly, Kristoffer Appel, Emma Chabani et al.
126 citations
Dreams take us to a different reality, a hallucinatory world that feels as real as any waking experience. These often-bizarre episodes are emblematic of human sleep but have yet to be adequately explained. Retrospective dream reports are subject to distortion and forgetting, presenting a fundamental challenge for neuroscientific studies of dreaming. Here we show that individuals who are asleep...
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
March 14, 2019
Benjamin Baird, Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Martin Dresler
196 citations
Lucid dreaming refers to the phenomenon of becoming aware of the fact that one is dreaming during ongoing sleep. Despite having been physiologically validated for decades, the neurobiology of lucid dreaming is still incompletely characterized. Here we review the neuroscientific literature on lucid dreaming, including electroencephalographic, neuroimaging, brain lesion, pharmacological and brain...
Consciousness and Cognition
June 20, 2016
David Saunders, Chris A Roe, Graham Smith et al.
93 citations
We report a quality effects meta-analysis on studies from the period 1966-2016 measuring either (a) lucid dreaming prevalence (one or more lucid dreams in a lifetime); (b) frequent lucid dreaming (one or more lucid dreams in a month) or both. A quality effects meta-analysis allows for the minimisation of the influence of study methodological quality on overall model estimates. Following...
Sleep
February 27, 2015
Pauline Dodet, Mario Chávez, Smaranda Leu-Semenescu et al.
115 citations
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. SETTINGS: University hospital sleep disorder unit. DESIGN: Case-control study. PARTICIPANTS: Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. METHODS: Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5...
Journal of Neuroscience
January 21, 2015
Elisa Filevich, Martin Dresler, Timothy R. Brick et al.
89 citations
Lucid dreaming is a state of awareness that one is dreaming, without leaving the sleep state. Dream reports show that self-reflection and volitional control are more pronounced in lucid compared with nonlucid dreams. Mostly on these grounds, lucid dreaming has been associated with metacognition. However, the link to lucid dreaming at the neural level has not yet been explored. We sought for...
The American Journal of Psychology
April 21, 2014
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Miriam Johnson et al.
104 citations
In lucid dreams the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. Although such dreams are not that uncommon, many aspects of lucid dream phenomenology are still unclear. An online survey was conducted to gather data about lucid dream origination, duration, active or passive participation in the dream, planned actions for lucid dreams, and other phenomenological aspects. Among the 684...
Consciousness and Cognition
September 8, 2013
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl
88 citations
Recent studies suggest that lucid dreaming (awareness of dreaming while dreaming) might be associated with increased brain activity over frontal regions during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. By applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we aimed to manipulate the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during REM sleep to increase dream lucidity. Nineteen...
Sleep
June 29, 2012
Martin Dresler, Renate Wehrle, Victor I. Spoormaker et al.
271 citations
STUDY OBJECTIVES: To investigate the neural correlates of lucid dreaming. DESIGN: Parallel EEG/fMRI recordings of night sleep. SETTING: Sleep laboratory and fMRI facilities. PARTICIPANTS: Four experienced lucid dreamers. INTERVENTIONS: N/A. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Out of 4 participants, one subject had 2 episodes of verified lucid REM sleep of sufficient length to be analyzed by fMRI. During...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
February 1, 2011
Michael Schredl, Daniel Erlacher
81 citations
Lucid dreams occur when a person is aware that he is dreaming while he is dreaming. In a representative sample of German adults (N = 919), 51% of the participants reported that they had experienced a lucid dream at least once. Lucid dream recall was significantly higher in women and negatively correlated with age. However, these effects might be explained by the frequency of dream recall, as...
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
February 18, 2010
Antonio Zadra, Robert O. Pihl
120 citations
BACKGROUND: Lucid dreams occur when a person becomes aware that he or she is dreaming while still in the dream state. Previous reports on the use of lucid dreaming in the treatment of nightmares do not contain adequate baseline data, follow-up data, or both. METHODS: A treatment of recurrent nightmares incorporating progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, and lucid dream induction is...
Sleep
September 1, 2009
Ursula Voss, R. Holzmann, Inka Tuin et al.
443 citations
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...
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
2006
Victor I. Spoormaker, Jan Van den Bout
155 citations
BACKGROUND: The goal of this pilot study was to evaluate the effects of the cognitive-restructuring technique 'lucid dreaming treatment' (LDT) on chronic nightmares. Becoming lucid (realizing that one is dreaming) during a nightmare allows one to alter the nightmare storyline during the nightmare itself. METHODS: After having filled out a sleep and a posttraumatic stress disorder questionnaire,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
February 15, 2000
Stephen LaBerge, Donald J. Degracia
77 citations
What can we conclude from the above quotations? Certainly nothing regarding the nature of eroticism in the lucid dream state. Rather, they illustrate that the experience of lucid dreaming is subject to individual variation. This should not be surprising, since lucid dreaming, like all forms of conscious experience, is comprised of a flow of subjective events created by brain processes using...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1981
Stephen P. La Berge, Lynn E. Nagel, William C. Dement et al.
237 citations
SUMMARY: The occurrence of lucid dreaming (dreaming while being conscious that one is dreaming) has been verified for 5 selected subjects who signaled that they knew they were dreaming while continuing to dream during unequivocal REM sleep. The signals consisted of particular dream actions having observable concomitants and were performed in accordance with pre-sleep agreement. The ability of...