Dreams have been extensively studied and experts are still trying to understand why we have them, how dream scenarios are created and whether the dream benefits the functioning of the brain.
But remembered dreams are often full of forgotten details and distortions, so Northwestern University experts wanted to talk to people while they dreamed in real time, to learn more about why dreams happen and how they can be useful for mental functioning. .
Scientists tried to talk to people during lucid dreams. During lucid dreaming, people report that they are aware that they are dreaming and usually say that they are able to direct or manipulate the content of the dream to some degree.
In separate experiments in the USA, France, Germany and the Netherlands, scientists studied 36 people with varying experiences of lucid dreaming, establishing two-way communication between subjects and asking questions using sensory stimulation, including ringing, beeps and flashing lights.
“We asked questions to individuals in the midst of lucid dreams and they were able to respond with eye movements or muscle contractions,” Karen Konkoly, Northwestern’s cognitive neuroscientist and one of the article’s authors, told CNN by email.
The researchers found that dreamers could follow instructions for making simple mathematical equations, answering “yes-no” questions and differentiating between tactile and auditory visual stimuli.
“This demonstrates that it is possible to correctly perceive external stimuli and perform the operations necessary to respond, all while staying asleep,” added Konkoly.
The teams found evidence of two-way communications between researchers and patients belonging to all categories of participants, which included experienced lucid dreamers, healthy people trained for lucid dreaming with minimal experience and patients with narcolepsy.
“Our article showed specific results from several examples from 29 different occasions when we received a correct answer to a question from a dreamer,” said Ken Paller, director of Northwestern’s Cognitive Neuroscience Program, to CNN, adding that there were also many cases in which that communication attempts were unsuccessful. Of 158 bidirectional communication attempts during REM sleep, 18.4% produced correct responses, Paller told CNN.
REM, which means rapid eye movement, is the stage of sleep in which we dream and information and experiences are consolidated and stored in memory.
“We only needed the discoveries of a handful of people to demonstrate convincingly that bidirectional communication is possible, which was our main conclusion. We showed that this can happen even in individuals with minimal previous experience with lucid dreams,” he said in a email .
“Our results showed that dreamers could understand the questions correctly, keep the information in working memory and manipulate the information (as in mathematical calculations) and express their answers in a coherent way.
“Thus, we gain knowledge about the cognitive skills that can be used during a dream. In this way, further research along these lines will reveal more about the conscious experiences of the dream and how they can differ from the conscious experiences of awakening,” he said.
The researchers say their methods can be used for future research on memory, nightmare therapy, spiritual development and problem solving.
The research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.