On the Edge: Neuroscience of Lucid Dreaming

[Rebecca71Jeanine]

WOW When I saw the title to this one, I just HAD to come and watch. My oldest brother was a 'guinea pig' for the Lucid Dream Society here in California for a looong time!!! I had NO idea what Lucid dreams were until my brother explained it to me...that's when I realized I had them on my own :P.... Now I have fun w/ them :D!!!

[TheAnotherJake]

It seems that different people have different Tells in their dreams. Mine are gravity--which doesn't work well--and breathing--which works too well... underwater... It's odd, but the fact that I can't read doesn't seem to tip me off, ever. It's also odd that flying is actually REALLY HARD! It's almost like lifting a too-heavy weight in the gym. Fast flying is even worse...almost impossible. Sometimes the dreams don't even cooperate and my control of them is so limited I get annoyed.

[TheAnotherJake]

Sometimes though, I have the God-like abilities to remake landscapes or build skyscrapers at the raise of a hand. I once reached the "end" of a dream only to have the ability to go back to the start and fix the mistakes I'd made that'd cost "lives" in the first go-around. I love the brain. Dreams blow my mind... so-to-speak.

[TheAnotherJake]

The oddest bit, perhaps, is the the characters... so real I might run into them on the street, but purely conjured from sheer thought, people I've never seen or think that I haven't. I often tell them they're not real... and sometimes they believe me, but it's funny how often they vehemently defend their reality as individual "people". hehe. Poor imaginary saps. I've even had them convince me that they WERE real and that we were sharing a dream. I had a good laugh at that when I awoke.

[nervousneuron]

@TheAnotherJake

Yeah, I reckon the people are the most interesting. I've had the opposite happen to me, in a lucid dream, the people were convincing me they were a 'figment of my imagination' and I was confused as I still believed they were real people.

I always treat dream characters like they are real (as in sentient beings), sometimes being exciting to share the lucid dream experience with them. I can never control their actions, and I don't want to anyway.

[EpicAmanda]

@nervousneuron

I've had some rather interesting experiences with dream characters.

Most of the time, my DCs deny that they don't exist and sometimes even prove that they exist, by doing something impossible in the waking world like shapeshifting.

one time I read that all DC faces in your dream are based off people you've met before. So In a lucid I just observed faces around me- often they are faces I know, but the character itself has different hair, features, bodily proportions. fascinating!

[rebelrouser444]

Aiiight Sista... you have a very good understanding of some of the dynamics and mechanics of the astral "world"/plane... whatever. I encourage you to continue further because what you are saying makes so much sense!

[rainbowheartlove1]

I have always wondered about my ability to dream while awake. I have found that if I move, I break the dream. But, in the past few years, it is getting more interesting because my reality checker is entering my dreams more. I now can't fly around or run around naked in a dream without thinking "I think this is a dream." However, I can't control the dream yet. I can sometimes magically clothe myself but other times it doesn't work.

[nervousneuron]

@rainbowheartlove1

Yeah I find it very hard to fully control a dream. The moment I try to control the dream as if it were a day dream, the whole thing falls apart and I wake up. The harder I think in the dream, the harder it is to do 'super human' stuff.

[zealcore]

I finally watched your video, thanks for filling my request! Some bits were really informative and interesting, great video as a whole. I'd really love to make a video about this as I'm really interested in this topic since my early childhood. I've been lucid dreaming for a long time and have been doing my own "first hand" research on lucid dreams lately. One thing that bothered me in the past: Is lucid dreaming healthy? As long as neuroscientist says it is, I'm ok with that. ;) Cheers and thx!

[nervousneuron]

@zealcore

Thanks! You should totally do a vid because it sounds like you have a lot of experience. Actually I have no idea about how healthy lucid dreaming is. It doesn't come with government health warnings yet so should be okay. And nobody (to my knowledge) has done a study on it. Though I did wonder if lucid dreaming every night would have any health impact. I imagined there must be a reason why we are naturally not lucid in our dreams. Don't know.

[knochenwerferin]

Thank you for answering my question, I put it in the youtubesearchmachine and find horrible things about it...laughing... I don't want to meet scary aliens or angels, that's my personal SAD ;) however... Thanks for your mindfulness response!

And...may the force be with you!

[knochenwerferin]

A very funny video, It's interesting to me, because I often dream this kind off stuff, that I'm awakening and than I see myself just sitting beneath me where I also liying in my bed and than I realized that I had to get back in my body.

Great disaster, because I don't know in which one of the bodys I should go. Is this a lucid dream ?

Sorry about my english and greetings from germany ;)

[nervousneuron]

@knochenwerferin

That sounds more like an out of body experience

[firejutsumaster777]

Oh, you.

You know how much I love that jacket! Good choice! I told you so before radioimmunoassay lab :)

By the way, nice glasses. Are they new? :)

And I've been waiting for this video! SO AWESOME!

Right on, Vivisectress, right on.

[nervousneuron]

@firejutsumaster777

Haha thanks Ron! I gots two pairs of glasses that are pretty old.

[FlipnBillys]

Sorry but ur a weird bitch

[nervousneuron]

@FlipnBillys

Sorry but ur an arsehole.

[APerfectAsss]

To study this, start with hypnopomic sleep paralysis as a 0-point. Easy to induce. Alcohol intoxication + sleep deprivation. Work backwards. In sleep paralysis, the dreamer is "aware" of the dream, but the body is not moving. EMG=0. EEG=1. The first few times I had sleep paraysis, I thought I was having a stroke or something. Once I researched it and became aware of what it was, it became something of a game to "outwit" it. To no avail. The brain always wins.

Great video, as usual.

[nervousneuron]

@APerfectAsss

Hmmm, I need to try that!

[APerfectAsss]

@nervousneuron

I say it's easy to induce. But sleep paralysis is also a fairly rare phenomenon. However, it is a situation that is a true lucid dream. The dreamer is aware that they are dreaming, Unfortunately, it is more like a nightmare! Sleep deprivation seems to be the key. Alcohol helps. I think the difference between physical activity (=0) and brain activity (=1) is the standard of measurement.

To induce vivid, if not lucid, dreams, try Chantix, the stop-smoking drug.

[TheAnotherJake]

@APerfectAsss I HATE sleep paralysis. I've only experienced it a couple times, but both times it was like the old stories... It felt like a demon holding me down, or what I would imagine that feels like. I could even see it to some extent. I even went so far as to cast it away in desperation... which, as unlikely as it sounds, worked. They're waking nightmares. Horrible and terrifying.

[APerfectAsss]

@nervousneuron

I say it's easy to induce. But sleep paralysis is also a fairly rare phenomenon. However, it is a situation that is a true lucid dream. The dreamer is aware that they are dreaming, Unfortunately, it is more like a nightmare! Sleep deprivation seems to be the key. Alcohol helps. I think the difference between physical activity (=0) and brain activity (=1) is the standard of measurement.

To induce vivid, if not lucid, dreams, try Chantix, the stop-smoking drug. 

[VideoGuyNC]

Interesting video and topic! I personally believe that "dreams" are the result of the more advanced human brain's ability to remember things. As we grow, learn and develop, our brains develop/form (synapses). These formations in effect connect memories and information. These "networks" if you will are effectively electrical networks. So, as the brain sleeps, pulses of energy are still circulated through these circuits - and thus the utopian dream world made of mixed real/altered recollections!

[nervousneuron]

@VideoGuyNC

Yeah, we know that dreams improve memory retention, but not exactly how. A blogger called Neuroskeptic recently blogged on the idea that sleeping is like 'brain defragging'

[secretdekoi]

@VideoGuyNC I agree... I believe that the other 90% of information is stored in our DNA, so when we dream our brain sends these signals to heal our body but it can't make sense of the nerves that have been damaged or are stressed so it feeds back information that could be useful in your waking state to figure out where the source of that tension is. I speak from experience only... i am not a neuroscientist but I see this in my dreams and in meditation.

[m8kzardoz]

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[Fata1paradOx]

And yeah, I'm almost convinced now that it's dorsolateral cortex that's responsible for the reality checking, quite strong evidence of that. But I wouldn't stop questioning it like pretty much everything else in science.

I wonder if I could train myself to lucid dream, like LaBerge did it with their participants.

[nervousneuron]

@Fata1paradOx

This is the brain, if only things were that simple :P

[ChaosTheory0]

@Fata1paradOx It is possible. The key thing is to become more of your surroundings during the day.

[Fata1paradOx]

Yeah, man! I've read this article, where they described how DMT builds up in the brains of people who take SSRI's and they basicaly can get psychotic. I actually experienced some voices and other weird crap on waking up in the morning. At that time I was on SSRIs and I smoked DMT the night before.

Also I had a weird dream few days ago where I got lucid for a second, then I woke up feeling really weird and seeing some mild visuals like ones u can get from DMT or shrooms.

[PuffyCatTail]

I suffer from insomnia and I could rarely remember my dreams. I started taking melatonin and now I have started to remember my dreams.

I think I remember reading somewhere that it was thought that people who hear voices may be producing too much DMT. It's an interesting thought anyway. :)

[nervousneuron]

@PuffyCatTail

Oh awesome, I gotta find that article :D