The image shows a participant sleeping on the left with eye and brain signals on the right. (Image Credit: Northwestern University/K.Konkoly)
Researchers at Northwestern University have achieved a breakthrough: communicating with people who are in the middle of lucid dreams, a phenomenon called interactive dreaming. Participants were able to solve basic math problems, answer yes-or-no questions, and follow instructions. The team's research demonstrates a "relatively unexplored communication channel" that could allow "a new strategy for the empirical exploration of dreams."
The study was meant for participants who aimed to have a lucid dream. They were in bidirectional communication with researchers before falling asleep. Others had practice with sensory simulations, which involved using beeps or lights. Participants were told to signal researchers when they had a lucid dream. This was achieved with rapid eye movements in a left-right pattern. Polysomnographic data was used by the researchers to verify whether a participant entered the REM stage.
"We found that individuals in REM sleep can interact with an experimenter and engage in real-time communication," says psychologist Ken Paller from Northwestern University. "We also showed that dreamers are capable of comprehending questions, engaging in working-memory operations, and producing answers.
"Most people might predict that this would not be possible – that people would either wake up when asked a question or fail to answer and certainly not comprehend a question without misconstruing it."
The team worked with 36 participants in four experiments across laboratories located at Sorbonne University in France, Osnabrück University in Germany, and Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The study included an individual with narcolepsy who frequently had lucid dreams and others who had different experiences with lucid dreaming.
The researchers discovered that people who are dreaming could follow instructions, do basic math, answer yes-or-no questions, or tell the difference between different sensory stimuli. Participants responded either with eye movements or facial contortions. The researchers used questions that had an obvious answer so they could determine if the correct answer was given by the participant.
For example, an American participant was asked to solve a simple math question: eight minus six while in a lucid dream. They correctly answered by signaling "two" with eye movements from left to right. Then, they were asked again and repeated the answer. Approximately 18% of the experiments achieved this clear and accurate communication from the dreamer. 17% had unknown answers, 3% produced wrong answers. Lastly, 60% didn't respond to the questions.
The majority of participants also remembered their communication with the researchers. They said that the questions sounded like a radio speaker or voice narrator. Others remembered different questions and answers after waking up compared to the ones they received or gave while dreaming. This signifies how difficult it is to recall dreams once a person wakes up.
The research could be used in the future to study dreams and memories. It could also help treat sleeping disorders and allow us to train what we see in our dreams.
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