Inside The Mind Of Lucid Dreamers: People Who Can Control Their Dreams And Perform Actions

Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com – Have you ever experienced that you know you are dreaming although you sleep? This is a hybrid state between sleeping and being awake. It is called lucid dreaming and it can be a somewhat awkward experience.

During lucid dreaming, you can sometimes take control of your dreams and perform various actions.

Scientists have long wondered what is happening inside the brain of a lucid dreamer. What role does consciousness play?

What was known from a scientific point of view, was the fact that lucid dreamers are people who can become aware of dreaming during sleep, but the process that caused this state was unknown.

The term lucid dreaming was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860-1932) in his 1913 article “A Study of Dreams”. At the time, his paper was not embraced by the scientific community. The situation has changed much since then.

In modern days, lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established.

What is happening inside the brain when you experience lucid dreaming?

Which areas of the brain help us to perceive our world in a self-reflective manner is difficult to measure.

During wakefulness, we are always conscious of ourselves. In sleep, however, we are not.

Studies employing magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) have now been able to demonstrate that a specific cortical network consisting of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar regions and the precuneus is activated when this lucid consciousness is attained.

All of these regions are associated with self-reflective functions.

Lucid dreaming
One of the most fun things to do in a lucid dream is to fly.

The human capacity of self-perception, self-reflection, and consciousness development are among the unsolved mysteries of neuroscience.

Despite modern imaging techniques, it is still impossible to fully visualize what goes on in the brain when people move to consciousness from an unconscious state.

The problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to watch our brain during this transitional change.

Although this process is the same, every time a person awakens from sleep, the basic activity of our brain is usually greatly reduced during deep sleep.

This makes it impossible to clearly delineate the specific brain activity underlying the regained self-perception and consciousness during the transition to wakefulness from the global changes in brain activity that takes place at the same time.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Psychiatry in Munich and for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and from Charité in Berlin have now studied people who are aware that they are dreaming while being in a dream state, and are also able to deliberately control their dreams.

Lucid dreamers can control their actions

Those so-called lucid dreamers have access to their memories during lucid dreaming, can perform actions and are aware of themselves – although remaining unmistakably in a dream state and not waking up.

Lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming is an unusual phenomenon in which some people are able to “wake up” while still in a dream. Though the dreamer is technically asleep, they are aware of their situation and are able to control the content of their dreams.

As author Martin Dresler explains, “In a normal dream, we have a very basal consciousness, we experience perceptions and emotions but we are not aware that we are only dreaming. It’s only in a lucid dream that the dreamer gets a meta-insight into his or her state.” By comparing the activity of the brain during one of these lucid periods with the activity measured immediately before in a normal dream, the scientists were able to identify the characteristic brain activities of lucid awareness.

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“The general basic activity of the brain is similar in a normal dream and in a lucid dream,” says Michael Czisch, head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry.

Cool Science Facts: Lucid Dreamers are people who can control their dreams

“In a lucid state, however, the activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex increases markedly within seconds.

The involved areas of the cerebral cortex are the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, to which commonly the function of self-assessment is attributed, and the frontopolar regions, which are responsible for evaluating our own thoughts and feelings. The precuneus is also especially active, a part of the brain that has long been linked with self-perception.” The findings confirm earlier studies and have made the neural networks of a conscious mental state visible for the first time.

Written by Cynthia McKanzie MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer

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