Lucid Dreamers Offer Clues to Consciousness Lucid dreamers, people who can deliberately control their dreams during sleep, have long fascinated scientists. And now brain scans of those self-aware sleepers could offer insight into the seat of self-reflection in the mind. It is difficult to get a full picture of what goes on in the brain when we make the transition from sleep to wakefulness. In fact, the specific areas of the brain underlying our restored self-perception and consciousness when we wake up have eluded scientists, according to a statement by the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. But a team of researchers was able to get a picture of that isolated activity in lucid dreamers. “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,” study researcher Martin Dresler, of Max Planck, said in a statement. “It’s only in a lucid dream that the dreamer gets a meta-insight into his or her state.” Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, the team compared the activity of the brain during one of these lucid-dreaming periods with the activity just beforehand in a normal dream. Out of four participants, only two lucid-dreaming episodes could be verified as lucid dreams and were long enough to analyze with fMRI, which measures blood flow to brain regions in real time; an increase in blood flow to a specific region is a sign that region is becoming more active. The results, detailed online July 1 in the journal Sleep, showed that a specific cortical network is activated when lucid consciousness is attained. Michael Czisch, another Max Planck researcher involved in the study, said activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex spikes within seconds when a lucid state begins. These regions include the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which has previously been associated with self-assessment, and the frontopolar regions, where the act of evaluating our own thoughts and feelings takes place, Czisch explained in a statement. “The precuneus is also especially active, a part of the brain that has long been linked with self-perception,” he said. Previous research at the Max Planck Institute compared the brain activity of lucid dreamers as they entertained the same thoughts while awake and asleep. The brain activity was similar, if weaker during sleep, the researchers found.

Lucid Dreamers Offer Clues to Consciousness

Lucid dreamers, people who can deliberately control their dreams during sleep, have long fascinated scientists. And now brain scans of those self-aware sleepers could offer insight into the seat of self-reflection in the mind.

It is difficult to get a full picture of what goes on in the brain when we make the transition from sleep to wakefulness. In fact, the specific areas of the brain underlying our restored self-perception and consciousness when we wake up have eluded scientists, according to a statement by the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. But a team of researchers was able to get a picture of that isolated activity in lucid dreamers.

“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,” study researcher Martin Dresler, of Max Planck, said in a statement. “It’s only in a lucid dream that the dreamer gets a meta-insight into his or her state.”

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, the team compared the activity of the brain during one of these lucid-dreaming periods with the activity just beforehand in a normal dream. Out of four participants, only two lucid-dreaming episodes could be verified as lucid dreams and were long enough to analyze with fMRI, which measures blood flow to brain regions in real time; an increase in blood flow to a specific region is a sign that region is becoming more active.

The results, detailed online July 1 in the journal Sleep, showed that a specific cortical network is activated when lucid consciousness is attained. Michael Czisch, another Max Planck researcher involved in the study, said activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex spikes within seconds when a lucid state begins.

These regions include the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which has previously been associated with self-assessment, and the frontopolar regions, where the act of evaluating our own thoughts and feelings takes place, Czisch explained in a statement. “The precuneus is also especially active, a part of the brain that has long been linked with self-perception,” he said.

Previous research at the Max Planck Institute compared the brain activity of lucid dreamers as they entertained the same thoughts while awake and asleep. The brain activity was similar, if weaker during sleep, the researchers found.

9 months ago
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Posted by ikenbot
# Science
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# Dreams
# Neuroscience
# Brain
# Lucidity
# Lucid
# Consciousness
# Cognition
# Education
Near-Death Experiences are Lucid Dreams, Experiment Finds In a new exercise by a California organization that studies lucid dreaming, volunteers have been conditioned to dream near-death experiences, including the classic scenario of flying toward a light at the end of a tunnel. The researchers say their experiment demonstrates that these heavenly visions must be products of the human mind rather than supernatural phenomena. In the sleep experiment at the Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, four groups of 10 to 20 volunteers were trained to perform a series of mental steps upon awakening during the night that might lead them to have out-of-body experiences. If able to “separate” from their bodies, they were then conditioned to try dreaming about floating through a tunnel toward a bright light. Eighteen of the volunteers said they were able to dream such an experience. “Some of the test subjects not only succeeded in reproducing the out-of-body flight through a tunnel, but also enjoyed the ecstasy typical of the experience, and even flew all the way to the light and met their deceased relatives there,” center leader Michael Raduga stated in a press release about the work, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. More than 8 million Americans have had a near-death experience, and they most often occur during states of anesthesia-induced sleep, according to the center. Prior work by neurologists, including Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky, suggests that NDEs are indeed generated by the same brain mechanisms that cause lucid dreams. Nelson’s research shows that both types of experiences arise when part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal region — our “logical center,” which is usually active only when we’re awake — becomes active during REM sleep, allowing extremely vivid dreams that seem to be happening in real life. He calls the transitional state between dreaming and wakefulness a “borderland of consciousness” and believes it is in this mixed state that lucid dreams and NDEs occur. With Nelson’s research in mind, Raduga designed his experiment to determine if volunteers could be coached to dream up NDEs when in the transitional phase between sleep and waking. This would demonstrate that reports of NDEs, which are commonly cited as proof of the supernatural, really are just lucid dreams. Volunteers who successfully generated NDEs described their experiences for the researchers. One participant, identified by the center asNadezhda S., stated: “I was able to leave my body after a couple of tries. Now that I was out of my body, I wanted to see the tunnel and it immediately appeared in front of me … Once I flew to the end of that tunnel … I saw my deceased husband there in the spirit. We spoke for several minutes. His words, touch, bearing, and feelings were real, just like during his life. Later on, when I felt it was time to leave, I went up to the tunnel, jumped and gently landed in my body.” Continue.. For more on Dreams, visit ikenbot.tumblr.com/dreams

Near-Death Experiences are Lucid Dreams, Experiment Finds

In a new exercise by a California organization that studies lucid dreaming, volunteers have been conditioned to dream near-death experiences, including the classic scenario of flying toward a light at the end of a tunnel. The researchers say their experiment demonstrates that these heavenly visions must be products of the human mind rather than supernatural phenomena.

In the sleep experiment at the Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, four groups of 10 to 20 volunteers were trained to perform a series of mental steps upon awakening during the night that might lead them to have out-of-body experiences. If able to “separate” from their bodies, they were then conditioned to try dreaming about floating through a tunnel toward a bright light. Eighteen of the volunteers said they were able to dream such an experience.

“Some of the test subjects not only succeeded in reproducing the out-of-body flight through a tunnel, but also enjoyed the ecstasy typical of the experience, and even flew all the way to the light and met their deceased relatives there,” center leader Michael Raduga stated in a press release about the work, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More than 8 million Americans have had a near-death experience, and they most often occur during states of anesthesia-induced sleep, according to the center. Prior work by neurologists, including Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky, suggests that NDEs are indeed generated by the same brain mechanisms that cause lucid dreams. Nelson’s research shows that both types of experiences arise when part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal region — our “logical center,” which is usually active only when we’re awake — becomes active during REM sleep, allowing extremely vivid dreams that seem to be happening in real life. He calls the transitional state between dreaming and wakefulness a “borderland of consciousness” and believes it is in this mixed state that lucid dreams and NDEs occur.

With Nelson’s research in mind, Raduga designed his experiment to determine if volunteers could be coached to dream up NDEs when in the transitional phase between sleep and waking. This would demonstrate that reports of NDEs, which are commonly cited as proof of the supernatural, really are just lucid dreams.

Volunteers who successfully generated NDEs described their experiences for the researchers. One participant, identified by the center asNadezhda S., stated: “I was able to leave my body after a couple of tries. Now that I was out of my body, I wanted to see the tunnel and it immediately appeared in front of me … Once I flew to the end of that tunnel … I saw my deceased husband there in the spirit. We spoke for several minutes. His words, touch, bearing, and feelings were real, just like during his life. Later on, when I felt it was time to leave, I went up to the tunnel, jumped and gently landed in my body.”

Continue..

For more on Dreams, visit ikenbot.tumblr.com/dreams

1 year ago
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# Near death experience
Science Back In Lucid Dreaming Photo: “Paul McCartney - Dream” by Amy Lehrman The contents of a person’s dream have been revealed by brain scan for the first time, scientists report in the Nov. 8 Current Biology. By monitoring the brain of a man who has unusual control over his dreaming, the accomplishment brings researchers closer to understanding how the brain spins its nightly yarns. “It’s really exciting that people have done this,” says sleep researcher Edward Pace-Schott at Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And it also brings back lucid dreaming as a very powerful scientific tool.” Lucid dreaming is the rare ability to direct behaviors while in a deep sleep. By all objective measures, the person is dead to the world: Most muscles are paralyzed and the eyes are doing the quick jitters that characterize REM, the main dreaming phase of sleep. But at the same time, the lucid dreamer knows that he is dreaming and can control the scenes, says study coauthor Michael Czisch of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. “The world is open to do everything.” Czisch and his team set out to catch a lucid dreamer’s brain activity with an fMRI machine. Instead of creating complex fantasias of flying over the Alps, scaling buildings or slaying dragons, six experienced lucid dreamers were asked to squeeze their left hands and then their right hands repeatedly in a dream. “It’s a rather easy thing to do,” Czisch says. “If it’s a random dream, things would be much more complicated.” Full Article: Feat opens the door to probing the stuff of nocturnal dramas

Science Back In Lucid Dreaming

Photo: “Paul McCartney - Dream” by Amy Lehrman

The contents of a person’s dream have been revealed by brain scan for the first time, scientists report in the Nov. 8 Current Biology. By monitoring the brain of a man who has unusual control over his dreaming, the accomplishment brings researchers closer to understanding how the brain spins its nightly yarns.

“It’s really exciting that people have done this,” says sleep researcher Edward Pace-Schott at Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And it also brings back lucid dreaming as a very powerful scientific tool.”

Lucid dreaming is the rare ability to direct behaviors while in a deep sleep. By all objective measures, the person is dead to the world: Most muscles are paralyzed and the eyes are doing the quick jitters that characterize REM, the main dreaming phase of sleep. But at the same time, the lucid dreamer knows that he is dreaming and can control the scenes, says study coauthor Michael Czisch of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. “The world is open to do everything.”

Czisch and his team set out to catch a lucid dreamer’s brain activity with an fMRI machine. Instead of creating complex fantasias of flying over the Alps, scaling buildings or slaying dragons, six experienced lucid dreamers were asked to squeeze their left hands and then their right hands repeatedly in a dream. “It’s a rather easy thing to do,” Czisch says. “If it’s a random dream, things would be much more complicated.”

Full Article: Feat opens the door to probing the stuff of nocturnal dramas

1 year ago
 542
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Posted by ikenbot
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tommyxvx replied to your post: what are your methods for lucid dreaming
Dream journals and reality checks are a must. I recommend holding your nose and trying to breathe through your fingers. It’s discreet, can be done anywhere and I’ve never once dreamt past it.


Yes! I love that there are some really neat habits you can creatively put into the list that can transfer over to dreams. It all depends on how imaginative and creative you can get with them.

1 year ago
 6
Posted by ikenbot
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A message from souprstoned


what are your methods for lucid dreaming

  1. Check ups; Make routinely check-ups in your waking world asking yourself “Am I dreaming” or “Is this a dream?” however you feel like asking it, but ask it. Look at the time, look away, look at it again and ask. Look at your hands in details, the lines you see on it, texture. Do this with just about anything you encounter on a daily basis while asking the question “Am I dreaming?”.

  2. Don’t sweat it; Every night before bed as you lay there try not to think about lucid dreaming but places where you want to be, keep it strong in your mind. Visualize places you might have seen in a movie, read in a book, heard of, or experienced personally and try to guide yourself around it. If you place too much importance and attention to the lucid dreaming part of it all, you’re gonna have lesser chances of lucid dreaming because it has to come on its own, naturally through habits.

  3. Play dead; Another thing to do alongside the visualizing of places you’d like to visit is to lay still. Pick a favorite position you know is most comfortable and stay like that without so much as scratching yourself. This will allow your body to know it’s ready to slip into paralysis in order for the dreams to occur. [Think of it as a game, you move you lose and have to start the countdown all over again]

  4. Dream journals; Keep a journal to write down your dreams and make a habit of actually reading them twice or more times over. This will subconsciously tell your brain what to look for to know when you’re dreaming.

  5. Waking reminder; This is where most people fail, even myself. When you wake up from slumber, lay still on the bed, don’t even move your position or flinch or think of what you had to do today or who you really like. Just lay there and try to recollect what happened in your dreams while you slept. It may seem like you never had one but you most likely did. You just need to get into the habit of teaching your brain that remembering dreams is important to you. And reading/ writing and thinking of them in a timely manner will help. But as I said earlier; don’t place too much emphasis on the lucid dreaming part and let it come naturally with practice.

1 year ago
 50
Posted by ikenbot
# Subconscious
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# Answers
# Lucid
cosmosweednlife: Look at the picture And in that point of the day, when you’re surprised, angry, showing concentrated emotions in something you look at your hands in great detail, look at its imperfections, perfections, blemishes, lines and ask yourself 3 times; Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Emerald Dream There is a 50% chance that you may end up dreaming of this place.

cosmosweednlife:

Look at the picture

And in that point of the day, when you’re surprised, angry, showing concentrated emotions in something

you look at your hands in great detail, look at its imperfections, perfections, blemishes, lines and ask yourself 3 times;

Am I dreaming?

Am I dreaming?

Am I dreaming?

Emerald Dream

There is a 50% chance that you may end up dreaming of this place.

2 years ago
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Posted by ikenbot
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A message from thepsychedelicdoctor


I've read a couple books on dreams and the science of it. I'll give you a list of a couple:
The Paradox of Sleep: The Story of Dreaming.
The Dream Drugstore.
Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Subconsciousness During Sleep.
I only remember the titles, but I'm pretty sure you could search them on Google.
A lot of people don't think much of their dreams and stick to the basics of it, but I believe that when you dream and seek out the knowledge of what's behind your thoughts-you're tampering with your subconscious. It's beautiful, it's a part of freedom.

Oh I think of my dreams and my dream-self obsessively, I envy the dream me for being able to create like a god. The most I can create is art :< But I will be checking those recommendations tonight. I’ve been stocking up on ebooks to sink my nose into (Winter is around the corner).

I’ve been practicing lucidity through the science side of it, the part requiring reasonable daily practices that transfers over to your dream self. I’m surprised at how effective it is. People see the movie inception and feel wowed, but once they do the real deal.. it’s like having your own Inception movie happen on an even greater more imaginative scale, since the dream world isn’t very stable and linear. It’s a great way to learn how to deal with constant change. Because what you learn in your Dream world, really does go over to your physical self.

2 years ago
 1
Posted by ikenbot
# dreams
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# lucid dream

Lucid dream discussion with Al

  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 42 am
  • Not really
  • just means you had an exciting dream
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 43 am
  • >: C
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 43 am
  • You not remembering just means you've been either putting too much thought to it
  • or
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 43 am
  • Maybe that's it
  • Cause every night I tell myself I'm going to wake up within my dream
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 44 am
  • You've been having unveventful dreams (which hardly happens)
  • I'd go with the first
  • it's gotto seem casual to your mind
  • unlike a nightly prayer
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 45 am
  • So if I pass out listening to music, I should be fine?
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 47 am
  • Here's what helps me: I know we all dream, everyday, there's no day we don't dream. Therefore when I wake up I convince my mind that there is actually something to remember and before 5 minutes even hit, it all comes flooding into my head like forgotten memories
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 47 am
  • Do you actually have to lie there? Or can you get up and recall?
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 47 am
  • It's never going to be about if you dreamt or not
  • No there's no lying
  • it's about how badly you want to remember
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 48 am
  • Lying as in the act of Laying on something
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 48 am
  • Your mind doesn't prioritize dreams as something that comes first, because dreams are meant to be subtle
  • so you gotto force it out
  • it's easiest to do it right when your eyes open up
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 50 am
  • that way all focus is on recalling, as opposed to muscle movement, deep breathing, walking, which requires a lot of brain function
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 50 am
  • So I shouldn't wake up to an alarm?
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 50 am
  • Not unless you plan on having the alarm wake you during REM
  • That requires some precision
  • Instead of just waking and remembering, then jotting it down to further state how much you want your mind to remember
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 52 am
  • After a while it becomes a habit to remember
  • Talking about it with friends also helps, anything that casualizes the act of the dream world helps
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 54 am
  • Because as you talk about it you subconciously & conciously note what seemed fishy within the dream
  • NeverShoutAl 12: 54 am
  • I used to remember my dreams a lot.
  • Kinda faded with age : c
  • Kenchi Gallardo 12: 55 am
  • it's easier when you're a kid due to less stress/ probs
2 years ago
 0
Posted by ikenbot
# lucid
# dream