WEBVTT - Ep 52 "What is lucid dreaming?" (Sleeping & Dreaming Part 3) 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:09.159 Does ten seconds in a dream equal ten seconds in 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:13.320 real life? How do you get information to somebody when 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:16.320 they're in a dream and how can they answer you 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.960 back while they're inside their dream. Why might you see 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.000 someone in real life flicking the light switch on and 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:27.240 off every time they enter a room? Can you prompt 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.880 your brain the way you prompt a large language model 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.760 like chatchpt And if so, if you could pose one 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:40.240 question to your unconscious brain, what would it be. Welcome 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:44.080 to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.080 and an author at Stanford and in these episodes we 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:52.120 sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand why 0:00:52.200 --> 0:01:04.240 and how our lives look the way they do. Today's 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.720 episode takes us on a journey into the world of 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.600 lucid dreaming. What is that? How can you experience it? 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.039 And what does it teach us about the nature of 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.479 our own consciousness. Joining us in a little bit will 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.840 be my friend and colleague Jonathan Barrant, who is very 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:26.479 knowledgeable about the art and science of lucid dreaming. So 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:30.440 get comfortable and let's dive in. So maybe you saw 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:34.200 this great movie Inception In case you didn't or as 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:39.400 a reminder, this is a Christopher Nolan science fiction heist thriller. 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:44.600 The star is Leonardo DiCaprio, and he's a skilled thief 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:50.600 who specializes in extraction, which is this fictional process of 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:55.360 entering a person's dream and stealing valuable secrets from deep 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:59.960 within their subconscious Now, the core of the story revolved 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.960 around this idea of inception, which is the idea of 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:09.720 planting an idea into somebody's subconscious mind without them knowing. So, 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:14.440 without giving away any details, DiCaprio sets out to incept 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:19.520 an idea into a business magnate's dream and this is 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:24.000 a really complex operation that requires his team to navigate 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:28.799 through dreams within dreams within dreams. And I won't give 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:33.000 away any spoilers here, but one of the very cinematically 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.320 cool ideas of the movie is that each layer of 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:41.280 dreams has successive time dilation. So when you go down 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.440 into the first level, ten seconds in the real world 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.840 might correspond to a minute of dream time, and as 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:52.640 you go deeper, the ten seconds might correspond to a 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:56.480 year or a decade of dream time. So the idea 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:00.320 in the movie is that dream time does not correspond 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.720 to real time. Now. It's a terrific movie, and if 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.600 you haven't seen it, you should. But there's this question 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.040 which lots of people have wondered about, which is, how 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:12.680 would you know if that's true? How would you know 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:18.440 whether dream time matches real time or not? Now you 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.600 might feel like they don't correspond. And this is in 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.560 part because sometimes you wake up from a dream and 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:27.520 you want to tell someone about it, but the telling 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.400 of the dream often seems to take a long time, 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.480 even if the dream only took you a second. And 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.960 in the last episode, I touched on why this can 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:39.800 be confusing because sometimes you have to explain a bunch 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:44.240 of background details, and sometimes you have false memories in 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:46.600 the dream that need to be included, and so it 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.440 sometimes takes time to get the whole thing put into words. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:55.280 So it can be difficult to answer whether dream time 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.320 and real time correspond. But today we're going to go 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.240 one step deeper. We're going to ask is there a 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:06.960 way that you could actually test this? Now, think about 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.640 what a difficult question this is, because it would require 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.160 somebody to be inside of their dream, and somehow they 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:17.480 would need to communicate with you what they are experiencing. 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.680 Privately in their head. Now that sounds totally impossible under 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.400 normal circumstances, But the question is, could you ever be 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:30.080 inside a dream and figure out how to communicate outside 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.159 of the dream, Or even better, could we think of 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.960 a way to get bi directional communications so that someone 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:42.560 outside can communicate with you in your dream and then 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:46.200 you communicate back out to them. Well, it turns out 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:48.960 there is a way to do that, and that's what 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.440 we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:57.479 about lucid dreaming, and this is when a sleeper realizes 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.119 that he or she is dreaming and then is able 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:05.080 to take some control over the plot of their dream. 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.839 They might choose to fly, or they can try to 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:12.400 control other people's actions, or generally just manipulate the physical 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:16.440 world of the dream. So here's my analogy. You know 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.679 those kids rides at the amusement park where you're sitting 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:22.760 in a car and you can steer the wheel, but 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:25.599 the wheel doesn't actually do anything. You're just on a 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:29.760 track and the car just follows wherever the track goes. 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:33.719 So imagine if you could get the steering wheel to 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.359 work and actually steer off that track. That's what a 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:42.560 lucid dream is instead of you always being the follower 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:46.920 in your dream, you are now the driver. Now, to 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.599 many people, lucid dreaming might sound like a concept straight 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:54.000 out of science fiction, but it's a well documented state 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:58.599 of sleep. A dreamer can become aware that they are dreaming, 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.640 and this awareness can from a faint recognition of the 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.680 dream state to a more profound acuity where the dreamer 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:12.559 takes control over their own actions and manipulates their environment. Now, 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.400 to understand this, we need to remember what we talked 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.360 about in the last two episodes, which is that our 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:22.240 sleep during the night moves through various phases. One of 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.799 these is called the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:30.520 or REM sleep, and this is where our vivid dreams occur, 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.960 and it's during REM sleep that lucid dreaming is most 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:37.760 likely to take place. Now, I mentioned last week that 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:43.000 during REM sleep, our body's major muscles are paralyzed, which 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:46.000 prevents us from acting out our dreams, and this is 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:50.360 also true during a lucid dream. But certain other parts 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.919 of the brain, especially those involved in self awareness and 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:59.479 executive function. These become more active when you're having a 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:03.760 lucid dream, so we usually think of brains as having 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:08.359 two possible states. You're either awake or you're asleep, but 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:12.280 being in a lucid dream is somewhere in between, and 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:16.800 the brainwave activity measured by EEG is different from normal 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:22.080 rem sleep. So this makes lucid dreaming a unique state 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.560 of consciousness where the dreaming mind wakes up but the 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:31.040 body remains in the sleep state. So the first question 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.360 is how do you do this? How do you become 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.280 lucid in a dream? Sometimes, if you're very lucky, a 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:41.240 lucid dream will happen. Accidentally. I had won many years 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.160 ago when I was in a dream where I was 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.200 at my high school locker bay with all my classmates, 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.360 and it slowly dawned on me that I was in 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.840 a dream and that none of this was real, and 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.480 I was able to take control of my dream. But 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.240 it only lasted a few seconds before I woke up up. 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:05.840 But lucid dream efficionados can train themselves in a variety 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.960 of ways that we'll talk about to have lucidity more 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:14.480 often and for longer. The main technique involves setting an 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:19.680 intention just before going to sleep to look for signs 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.679 that you're dreaming. Little clues that something doesn't quite make sense, 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.080 and then the idea is if you see those things 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.480 that will alert you that you are inside a dream, 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.720 and then you can try to take control. The general 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:37.280 story is that if we get good enough at questioning reality, 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:42.120 we can then pass more easily into lucid dreaming. So 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:44.600 what is lucid dreaming all about? And how can you 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.080 get good at it? To explore this in depth, I 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.600 called up my friend Jonathan Barrent JB. As he goes by. 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.200 He worked for many years at Google, including at X 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:58.040 the Moonshot Factory, and he is a connoisseur of lucid 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.560 dreaming and he lectures at Stanford about it. So I 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:04.400 wanted to get his take on this rare and amazing 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:14.439 version of consciousness. So, Jonathan, what is a lucid dream? 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.959 A lucid dream is any dream we're actually aware that 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:20.199 you are dreaming. 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.080 What got you interested in lucid dreaming? 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.600 There was a book called The Shaping Room, and it 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.080 was a fictional book, but the character in it had 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.840 the ability to imagine these landscapes. He would actually put 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.920 his hand in this clay and I just got curious, 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.840 and I think, you know, one day in a bookstore, 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.160 I came across Stephen Laberge's exploring the world of lucid dreaming, 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:45.960 and I read that and I realized, like, wow, there's 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:48.520 actually a way to get into a state of consciousness 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:52.959 where you can envision different dreamscapes and you can have 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.320 some measure of control. And I was hooked ever since. 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:58.920 And for anyone who doesn't know, Stephen Laberge is a 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:02.480 colleague of ours who is a century the pioneer in 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.840 lucid dreaming. And so the question is, JB, what are 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.320 the best ways that somebody can train up to allow 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:12.960 themselves to have a lucid dream. Sure, there's a few 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.959 key steps. The first one is working on dream recall. 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:18.760 You want to get to a place where you can 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.160 remember two, three, maybe even four dreams a night. So 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:24.720 you know, having a dream journal, having the intention to 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.120 remember your dreams is you know, the first key. As 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:30.280 you build your dream journal, you're going to find what 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:33.040 are sometimes called dream signs. You'll find that there are 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.360 some certain patterns, like for me, if a dream sign 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:38.960 is being back in Indiana, where I was from. And 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:41.160 so as you start to learn your dream signs, you 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.560 can then start to anchor on that being something that 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.400 triggers lucidity. If I can just clarify for the listeners, 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:52.319 a dream sign meaning a sign that you are dreaming exactly. 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.840 Yes, you're looking for these sign posts because we don't 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.960 naturally question reality right now, we're not even questioning that 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.520 this might be a dream. But we because we are 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:04.760 often fooled in most of the dreams we have, we 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.880 don't have that recognition. So you need cues, and we 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.640 call those dream signs. And the more you journal about 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:14.600 your dreams, the more you'll find some patterns. So that's 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.840 the first step, is you have your dream journaling and 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:19.320 you have your dream signs. 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:21.720 So that you can get good at recognizing I am 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:23.520 I must be in a dream right now? 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:28.160 Correct. Now. There are some ways that have been really 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:33.240 scientifically studied and rather robustly to ensure you have sort 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:36.000 of a maximum chance. And so one of those is 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.680 the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams. And so that means, 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:42.480 as you are going to bed, you can say, next 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:44.800 time I'm dreaming, I want to remember that I'm dreaming. 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:46.880 You sort of place this little hook and they call 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.360 that prospective memory where you're trying to remember something in 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:53.440 the future. Now, you can make it even easier on 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.640 yourself if you wake yourself up after about three or 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.040 four hours of sleep, and that method is called the 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.240 wake back to bed. Why, well, you get through most 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.880 of the denser part of your sleep at the first 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.240 part of your night, the slow wave sleep, the restorative sleep, 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:12.080 and then the latter half is more rem sleep. So 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:14.640 if you wake yourself up after three or four hours 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:18.240 and then you do that mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming, say, 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:20.840 next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember I'm dreaming. Well, 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:23.679 you chances are you'll go directly into REM. And when 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.839 you go directly into REM after having slept for four 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:28.679 hours and maybe being up for a little bit, you're 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.319 going to be more likely to actually see that trigger 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:33.480 and remember it that you're actually in a lucid dream. 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:35.280 That's one of the most effective ways to become a 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:35.960 lucid dreamer. 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.439 Let me just understand it. It's what do you mean 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:42.000 I want to remember that I'm dreaming? You mean I 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.920 want to recognize that I'm dreaming. Yes, okay, yes, So 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.200 you're in a dream and you say, wait a minute, 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:54.040 I'm back in Indiana. This doesn't seem real, I must 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.120 be in a dream. And so then what do you do. 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.480 When you recognize or you think you recognize, it's good 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:02.720 to do what's called a reality check. You want to 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:05.280 see are you truly in a dream state? And so 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.440 there's been lots of different reality checks along the way. 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:12.320 Some people look at their hand. That was popularized by 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:17.880 Carlos Cassandra and his books on the Pathways of Dreaming. 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:19.920 Why look at your hand? What are you looking for? 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:22.640 Well, when you look at your hand in a dream, 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.320 it just doesn't look like a five fingered hand. Often 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:28.240 there'll be like a sixth finger. It will it will 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:30.679 have some sort of blurring, you know, to it for 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:34.240 some reason. Although the mind can recreate many, many things 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.320 with exquisite detail and dreams, it has trouble recreating a 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:39.120 perfect hand. 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.839 This sounds like Dolly, yeah. So the idea is you 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.840 get in the habit of looking at your hand and 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.600 if it looks odd, then you say, why does my 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.240 hand look so odd? And then you think, wait, wait, 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:54.640 I must be dreaming. 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.880 That's the idea, right, that's right, that's the idea. Other 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.599 people might try to fly. Obviously, you jump up and 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.240 gravity holds you down, then you know you're most likely 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:09.920 in this reality, which lucid dreamers like to call consensus reality. 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:13.040 And you know, there's another one that's kind of interesting 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.600 that if you pinch your nose and try to breathe, 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:18.679 which I wasn't able to do, but in a dream, 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.400 there's no constriction and you actually will breathe right through that. 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:25.280 So that's kind of an unusual reality check. There's many 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.600 of them, but the main thing is to have one 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.280 or two reality checks that you can do both during 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:34.200 the day at a time like this, and then when 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:36.720 you are you know, have some sort of recognition that 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:38.760 you're in a dream, you can perform that reality check 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:40.320 and then it'll either pass or fail. 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.520 So the idea is to get in the habit of 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.800 doing reality checks, like seeing if you can breathe with 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.240 your nose pinched, or whether you can see your hand. 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:54.040 Another one that I'm fond of is you put your 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:56.520 you know, your thumbnail up on your tooth and you 0:14:56.560 --> 0:15:00.360 try to flick your tooth off, and in consensus re reality, 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:02.560 your tooth doesn't come off. But often what will happen 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.120 in a dream is your tooth goes flying off into 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:07.120 the air and you think, what the heck just happened? 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:10.560 You think, oh, yes, I must be in a dream. 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.600 That's right. All those are better than what has been 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.200 popularized in the movie Inception, which is the spinning top. 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:18.560 Of course that makes for a good graphic and a 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:22.440 good movie, but that's not really a great reality check. 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:24.240 Any of these other ones that we've talked about are 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:24.720 much better. 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.800 Wait, I had forgotten about the spinning top. Why what 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.480 were they doing? And why is that not a good check? 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.880 So you know, Leonardo's character spins it, and if it 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.320 falls down, then he knows he's in a that he's 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:40.640 in consensus reality. But if it keeps on spinning, then 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:42.880 he's in a dream. And of course the movie ends 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:46.360 with this you know, undefined state of like who knows 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:49.000 if this whole movie was a dream, But you know, 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:53.520 in an actual dream, you know, when you're spinning, there's 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.520 no evidence that the top will keep on spinning in 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.760 a lucid dream versus you know, fall down. Much more 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.120 tried and true methods are the ones that we've talked about. 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.600 The only other one that gets, you know, a little 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.640 bit closer to something like that is a light switch. 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.920 For some reason, when you flip light switches in lucid dreams, 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.880 they tend not to work. But the by far the 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.960 most robust one that with the science behind it, is 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.880 one that we haven't mentioned, So that one is looking 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.800 at a piece of text, so something that's been written, 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:27.640 and that could be you know, could you know, be 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.320 your watch? You know, twelve thirty nine. You look away 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:32.800 and then you look back, and indeed it's the same. 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:35.320 And so Leberg's i think, was the first to study 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.360 that and found about eighty to eighty five percent of 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.680 the time that was a reliable measure that the brain 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:42.840 doesn't recreate. 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.560 You say, it's the same in consensus reality, but in 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.000 a dream when you look back at the clock, it 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:49.600 is different. 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:54.880 It's different, yes, And that's because there's no sensory constraints 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.560 in the dream, right. And so I think one of 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:02.400 the one of the interesting things that Lebert's used to say, 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:04.600 and he was, you know, my mentor for years, and 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.680 I'm very grateful for all the things that I learned 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:12.639 from him. He said that dreaming is really perceiving without 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:19.480 sensory constraints, and perceiving is dreaming with sensory constraints. It's 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:21.040 a little bit of a play on words, but it's 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.119 really getting across a fairly important piece of meaning that 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:28.680 the dreaming mechanism and the perceiving mechanisms are very very similar. 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:33.520 So let's unpack that for the listeners. So the idea 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.640 is that, you know, you just take vision, for example, 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.440 only five percent of the input to the visual cortex 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:44.200 is actually coming from the retinas, from the eyeballs, and 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:48.080 all the rest is internally generated. And so this is 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:52.000 why you can have dreams, for example, where your eyes 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:55.680 are closed but you're having full, rich, visual experience, because 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.600 it's just this machinery running on its own without the 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:02.520 little bit of modulation that comes in from your eyes. 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.040 And so this is the sense in which when we're 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:10.560 awake it's like awake dreaming. It's the same processes that 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:12.560 we have when we're seeing when we're dreaming, it's just 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:15.119 that when your eyes are open, things are anchored a 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.960 bit more. I'm just unpacking this. So this is what 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:20.399 you mean when you say, actually, how do you phrase it? 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:25.119 Perception is Perception is dreaming with sensory constraints, and then 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:26.159 you can you flip. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.000 It so you're anchored to what's in front of you. 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:31.719 But otherwise it's the same process as dreaming. Okay, now, 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:33.000 what was the other half of the sentence? 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:37.960 Dreaming is perceiving without sensory constraints, got it, okay? 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.240 Right, in the sense that your brain is doing its thing, 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.960 but it's not tied to what's actually on a wristwatch. 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:49.960 It gets to invent what's on the watch at every moment. 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:54.760 Right now. One of the interesting studies that Stephen Labers 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.720 did and then Philips Embardo also one of your colleagues 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.399 at Stanford is they wanted to design experiment that could 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:06.440 you know, actually prove this, and I think it's fascinating. 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.480 It was published in twenty eighteen in Nature Communications. And 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.040 as you're very well familiar, the eyes when they lock 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:15.240 onto something like a finger and they trace it, they 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:16.640 have a smooth pursuit. 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:18.840 So when you're hold on when you're moving your finger 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:21.760 back and forth in front of you, just for listeners, 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.080 your eyes are smoothly moving back and forth with your finger, 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:28.479 as opposed to if you're not moving your finger and 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:30.320 you just try to move your eyes to the left 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.280 and right. Your eyes make jumps. They go jump jump, jump, jump, 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:34.760 and then they go jump jump jump, the other way. 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:36.680 Those are called secods scots. 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.119 Yes, So with that in mind and with you know 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:44.000 that understanding of our neurobiology, they designed a clever experiment 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.080 where they had participants look at their finger in consensus 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.719 reality and then just trace a circle. And then they 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.480 had leads eog leads to measure you know, their eye 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:59.280 movements electro oculargram, so measuring the potentials of the eyes. 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:01.159 The eyes are pulled rise, so when you move the 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.600 eyes just very you know, basic biopotential sensors can see it. 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:07.000 So these are little electrodes you stick on to the 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.600 outside of the eye and you can measure where the 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:11.879 eye is located, whether it's looking up or down or 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.040 left to right, even when the eyelids are closed. 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:18.520 Correct. Yes, And so they measured that while people were 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.680 tracing their finger and doing a circle, and it had 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.040 as you would expect, that smooth pursuit seeing you know, 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.199 the eye tracings in that. Then they had people you know, 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.360 close their eyes while still awake and just imagine that, 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:34.800 and so you know they can move their eyes, but 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:37.640 as you just said, they have more psychotic movements when 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.119 there's no anchor, when there's no finger to anchor on. 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:42.720 So if I'm just imagining my finger moving with my 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:44.960 eyes closed, I see jump jump, jump jump instead of 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:45.639 smooth pursuit. 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:50.639 Okay, right, So then they had these people go into 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:55.600 a lucid dream and remember the dream task of actually 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.960 putting their finger up their dream finger and watching it 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:03.560 go around and much too. I think the surprise of many, 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.520 it mirrored much more closely. I could show you the 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.200 plots in the paper much more closely to the waken 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.560 reality and compared to the imagination where it was very jagged. 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.360 So the idea is, when you're an elucid dream and 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:21.320 you're imagining your finger moving back and forth, your eyes 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:25.439 are making something more like smooth pursuit because it's like 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:26.679 actually seeing it. 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:30.160 Yes, yes, it's kind of amazing because then it goes 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:32.399 back to what we were just saying that dreaming is 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:36.160 perceiving without sensory constraints, and perceiving is dreaming, And so 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:41.440 the mechanisms are very similar. I'm not saying that they're identical, 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:43.760 but they are very similar, and I think that just 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.000 opens up to a lot of interesting possibilities for lucid 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:47.680 dream research. 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:07.440 Now we jumped straight into something which is doing an 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:10.120 experiment with lucid dreaming. But I just want to fill 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:12.520 out a little bit more so everyone gets this. So 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:15.560 let's say I look at some texts in a book 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:17.720 and the text doesn't really make sense, and I look 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:21.280 back and the text is different. I might think, Wow, 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:25.400 what's going on here? Oh wait, I must be dreaming, 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:29.800 and then I can transition into making it a lucid dream. 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:33.040 So what happens when I turn lucid? 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:37.600 Yeah, So when people turn lucid, they often, if it's 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:39.480 the very first time, it might be a very short 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.680 experience because they get kind of excited, and as they 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:46.199 get excited, more areas of the brain light up and 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:49.320 they wake up. However, if they don't, or if it's 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.479 maybe their second or third time, they can then really 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:57.080 explore the world. They can look at the objects around them, 0:22:57.160 --> 0:22:59.680 they can touch them, feel them, they can taste them. 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:04.480 All five senses are working in the dream world. They 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:08.600 could travel to a different location. It's interesting to note 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.000 that there's almost like skills that you can develop. It 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:14.560