dilemmas, and because this group is

older, the subjects may not recall as

many dreams. A significant number of
them, however, report having a useful
dream after only one week of incuba-
tion practice.

Your Dreams
Shortly after my book The Com-
mittee of Sleep was published in 2001,
I heard Newman recount his story on a
PBS show about John Nash and the
film A Beautiful Mind. A year later I
was unexpectedly seated next to Nash
at a dinner party. I asked him about the
incident, which he remembered well.
“Don actually included a footnote
thanking me in the paper,” Nash
chuckled, “and he kept acting grateful,
like I’d actually helped him when it was
his dream.” I came across that remark
often in my survey. Solutions frequent-
ly came from a dream character— one
computer programmer got repeated
nocturnal lessons from Albert Ein-
stein — and people had trouble taking
full credit for what their dreaming

Unlocking the
mind had done. This tendency fits
brain findings for REM sleep in which
the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as-

Lucid Dream
sociated with perceptions of volition, is
less active.
But we need not wait passively for
inspiration to strike. We spend almost a
third of our lives asleep — and almost a Becoming aware of your sleeping self could relieve
third of that time dreaming. My re- anxiety or tap the creative unconscious
search suggests that in a short amount
of time, people can learn to focus their By Ursula Voss
dreams on minor problems and often
solve them [see box on opposite page].
WITH LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY Gett y Images

As for the bigger concerns, surveys find I moved my eyes, and I realized that I was asleep in bed.
that all kinds of mysteries can be re- When I saw the beautiful landscape start to blur, I
vealed in dreams—two Nobel Prizes re- thought to myself, “This is my dream; I want it to stay!”
sulted from dreams, after all. But even And the scene reappeared. Then I thought to myself how
if you choose to leave your sleeping nice it would be to gallop through this landscape. I got
brain alone, pay attention: after nod- myself a horse … I could feel myself riding the horse and
ding off, your brain in its altered state lying in bed at the same time.
▲

of consciousness is very likely already

hard at work. M

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 S
o recounted a test subject in the sleep laboratory at the Uni-
versity of Bonn in Germany. This particular sleeper was
having a lucid dream, in which the dreamer recognizes
that he or she is dreaming and can sometimes influence the
course of the dream. By measuring the brain waves of lu-
cid dreamers, my colleagues and I are gaining a better understanding
of the neural processes underlying this state of consciousness that ex-
ists between sleep and waking. In addition to providing clues about
the nature of consciousness, research on These signals are easily distinguished
lucid dreams is also beginning to suggest from the rapid eye movement (REM) that
new ways to treat anxiety and learn com- occurs randomly during regular dreams.
plex movements while asleep. We still use this method today.
After a sleeper has signaled with eye
Waking Frequencies during Sleep movements that a lucid dream has start-
Most people report having a lucid ed, researchers can investigate the corre- Chronic nightmare
dream at least once in their life, and a small
fraction of us have them as often as once or
sponding brain activity using electroen-
cephalography (EEG). In an EEG record-
sufferers often find
twice a week. Some individuals even devel- ing, electrodes attached to the skin of the their only source of
op routines to increase their chances of
having a lucid dream [see box on opposite
head pick up the oscillating electrical sig-
nals that indicate that thousands or mil-
relief is learning
page]. But researchers who wanted to lions of neurons are firing in synchrony. how to take control
study lucid dreams were long confounded
by the need to rely on subjects’ self-reports.
Recent studies indicate that the brain’s
activity during lucid dreaming resembles
of their dreams.
The process of recall is notoriously prone that of waking consciousness. Becoming aware
to distortion; for example, some people
may confuse lucid dreams with the tran-
In 2009 my team and I decided to take
a closer look at the brain activity of lucid
may create emo-
sient hallucinations that occur while fall- dreamers. In the sleep laboratory, we tional distance.
ing asleep or waking up. found what we believe to be an electrical
In 1975 sleep researcher Stephen La- signature of lucid dreaming—increased
Berge of Stanford University and his col- activity in the 40-hertz range (the “gam-
leagues figured out a way to prevent such ma band”), primarily in the frontal lobe, lobe seems to work in lucid dreams much
misinterpretation. Unlike the rest of the located behind the forehead. We tend to as it does in the waking state, whereas ar-
body, the eye and its movements are not generate these high-frequency waves eas in the parietal and temporal lobes ex-
inhibited during sleep. The researchers in- when we concentrate on a particular ob- hibit patterns more typical of REM sleep.
structed subjects to move their eyes a cer- ject. In addition to the frontal lobe, other Another striking feature in our study
tain way as soon as the sleepers recognized regions of the cerebral cortex—the rippled involved coherence—a rough measure of
they were dreaming, for example, by roll- mantle on the surface of the brain—play a how coordinated the activity is in various
ing their eyes twice from left to right. major role in lucid dreaming. The frontal areas of the brain. Coherence is generally
slightly decreased in REM sleep, but not
during lucid dreams. Think of the brain’s
FAST FACTS activity during REM sleep as equivalent
Asleep yet Aware to a party with all the guests talking si-
multaneously. In lucid dreams, however,

1 >> Approximately eight out of 10 people have had a lucid dream, in

which they were conscious of their dreaming, at least once.
the party guests tend to converse with
one another, and the overall background
C A R L O S G O TAY G e t t y I m a g e s

noise decreases.

2>> Parts of the brain tend to work together more intensely during lucid
dreaming than in other dream phases. Beyond Fantasies
Until recently, most experts thought

3 >> Lucid dreaming is useful for treating chronic nightmares and per-
haps even anxiety.
of lucid dreaming as a curiosity— a fun
way to act out wishful thinking about
flying or meeting celebrities. But recent

34 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND N ove m b e r/D e c e m b e r 2 01 1

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 sequences, such as those needed in the

Am I Dreaming? high jump, more quickly after targeted

lucid-dream training.
Regular dreams have been shown to

L
ucid dreams cannot be willfully induced, but be involved in problem solving, so some
you can increase the likelihood that you will researchers have asked if lucid dreams
have one. People who practice these tech- could be useful in focusing the dreamer’s
niques regularly are able to have one or two lucid dreams per week. mind. A small study last year at Liverpool
John Moores University in England sug-
1. Throughout each day, ask yourself repeatedly if you are awake. When this habit gests that lucid dreams are good for cre-
becomes ingrained, you may find yourself asking the question in a dream — at which ative endeavors such as inventing meta-
point your chances of realizing you are dreaming skyrocket. phors but not for more rational exercises
2. Make a point to look in a mirror or reread a bit of text every so often as a “reality such as solving brainteasers. The lucid
check.” In dreams, our appearance is often altered and the written word is notori- dreamers in the study were instructed to
ously hard to pin down. You may carry the habit of checking for these dream signs summon a “guru” figure, a wise charac-
into sleep, where they could alert you to the fact that you are dreaming. ter to serve as a kind of guide. Indeed,
3. Keep a dream journal by the bed and jot down the dreams you remember immedi- some of the subjects found their dream
ately on waking. Studies show that this practice makes you more aware of your characters to be surprisingly helpful.
dreams in general, and people who are more aware of their dreams are more likely We still have much to learn about lu-
to have a lucid dream. cid dreaming. For example, we do not
4. Before falling asleep, focus intently on the fantasy you hope to experience in as much know under what circumstances these
detail as possible. Research shows that “incubating” an idea just before bed dra- dreams appear most frequently or how to
matically increases the likelihood that you will dream about it. And if you suddenly induce them more reliably. Once we do,
notice that you are dancing with the movie star you hoped to meet, you might just we may finally harness these unique
realize you are having a dream and be able to take control of what happens next. dreams’ healing power and gain insight
into the nature of consciousness. Lucid
Adapted from the Lucidity Institute’s Web site: www.lucidity.com
dreaming’s potential for therapy, prob-
lem solving or pure entertainment could
research has uncovered practical uses for even become so adept at lucid dreaming be limitless. M
lucid dreams. Chronic nightmare suffer- that they are able to keep themselves
ers often find their only source of relief is from imagining frightening disaster sce-
learning how to take control of their narios while they are asleep.
(Further Reading)
dreams. A study in Psychotherapy and In theory, lucid dreams could help al- ◆ Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide
Psychosomatics in October 2006 found leviate generalized anxiety or the reac- to Awakening in Your Dreams
and in Your Life. Stephen La-
that those who learned how to increase tion to specific fear stimuli in everyday
Berge. Sounds True, Inc., 2009.
their frequency of lucid dreams reported life (for instance, spiders) by allowing ◆ Lucid Dreaming: A State of Con-
fewer awful dreams afterward, although people to confront worries and frights in sciousness with Features of Both
the exact mechanism underlying the re- the safe environment afforded by know- Waking and Non-lucid Dreaming.
lief is unclear. Perhaps becoming aware ing “it’s just a dream.” More research is Ursula Voss, Romain Holzmann,
Inka Tuin and J. Allan Hobson in
during a bad dream allows sufferers to needed to test this application.
Sleep, Vol. 32, No. 9, pages 1191–
distance themselves emotionally from Beyond therapeutic applications, lu- 1200; September 2009.
the dream’s content. Some people may cid dreaming may also facilitate the learn- ◆ An Exploratory Study of Creative
ing of complicated movement sequences. Problem Solving in Lucid Dreams:
PHIL ASHLE Y Getty Images

In dreams, we are all capable of unusual Preliminary Findings and Method-

(The Author) ological Considerations. Tadas
actions. We can fly, walk through walls or
Stumbrys and Michael Daniels in
URSULA VOSS is currently a visiting make objects disappear. According to International Journal of Dream
professor of psychology at the Univer- sports psychologist Daniel Erlacher of the Research, Vol. 3, No. 2, pages
sity of Bonn in Germany. University of Heidelberg in Germany, 121–129; November 2010.
athletes can internalize complex motor

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