Researchers successfully establish two-way communication with sleeping lucid dreamers
What's the story
A group of international researchers published a technical paper on Thursday explaining that they were able to communicate in real-time with lucid dreamers. A lucid dream is one in which the dreamer becomes aware they are dreaming, while they continue to sleep. This state of the mind has been the subject of movies such as Inception, although scientific research lags behind.
Solving math
Subjects used specific eye movements to answer researchers' questions
The scientists were able to establish real-time two-way communication with test subjects who were fast asleep and in the midst of a lucid dream. The test subjects were able to communicate with specific eye movements, responding to questions and even solving simple math problems in real-time. The researchers were able to communicate accurately with the dreamers about 18% of the time.
Endless possibility
The study opens avenues to empirical exploration of sleep
Research suggests that another 20% of the time communication does occur, but yields incorrect or incoherent responses from the dreamer. This path-breaking study will provide science with priceless information about the content, structure, and empirical exploration of sleep. The test's lead author Karen Konkoly said the team has thought of many different experiments and that there's no waiting time for data analysis.
Vivid experience
Dreamers recollected hearing a narrator outside their dream
Talking to Motherboard, Konkoly said there are studies of lucid dreamers communicating out of dreams and also remembering tasks, but there is limited research on the stimuli going into lucid dreams. After waking up, the dreamers reported hearing the researchers as an intangible narrator from outside their dream. Konkoly added that the experiment's results are exciting and rewarding.
Sleeping for science
Experiment studied 36 people with varying levels of dreaming experience
The study recruited 36 people to fall asleep for research purposes. Several subjects were experienced lucid dreamers and some were not. One of the experienced dreamers was narcoleptic. Scientists used electrodes placed at strategic locations to measure brainwaves and eyeball movements after a person was confirmed to be in deep sleep. Communication was made possible by the test subject's eye movement in specified patterns.
Future scope
Researchers plan to pursue the study with more experimentation
Although the research shows promise, deep sleep, its causes, and the reason behind dreams still remain largely unknown. In fact, during this study, nearly 60% of the researchers' questions were not answered by the test subjects. The team of researchers plans to build on this study with more experiments to probe the possibilities of two-way communication with dreamers.