Speaker 1: Does ten seconds in a dream equal ten seconds in
Speaker 1: real life? How do you get information to somebody when
Speaker 1: they're in a dream and how can they answer you
Speaker 1: back while they're inside their dream. Why might you see
Speaker 1: someone in real life flicking the light switch on and
Speaker 1: off every time they enter a room? Can you prompt
Speaker 1: your brain the way you prompt a large language model
Speaker 1: like chatchpt And if so, if you could pose one
Speaker 1: question to your unconscious brain, what would it be. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist
Speaker 1: and an author at Stanford and in these episodes we
Speaker 1: sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand why
Speaker 1: and how our lives look the way they do. Today's
Speaker 1: episode takes us on a journey into the world of
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. What is that? How can you experience it?
Speaker 1: And what does it teach us about the nature of
Speaker 1: our own consciousness. Joining us in a little bit will
Speaker 1: be my friend and colleague Jonathan Barrant, who is very
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about the art and science of lucid dreaming. So
Speaker 1: get comfortable and let's dive in. So maybe you saw
Speaker 1: this great movie Inception In case you didn't or as
Speaker 1: a reminder, this is a Christopher Nolan science fiction heist thriller.
Speaker 1: The star is Leonardo DiCaprio, and he's a skilled thief
Speaker 1: who specializes in extraction, which is this fictional process of
Speaker 1: entering a person's dream and stealing valuable secrets from deep
Speaker 1: within their subconscious Now, the core of the story revolved
Speaker 1: around this idea of inception, which is the idea of
Speaker 1: planting an idea into somebody's subconscious mind without them knowing. So,
Speaker 1: without giving away any details, DiCaprio sets out to incept
Speaker 1: an idea into a business magnate's dream and this is
Speaker 1: a really complex operation that requires his team to navigate
Speaker 1: through dreams within dreams within dreams. And I won't give
Speaker 1: away any spoilers here, but one of the very cinematically
Speaker 1: cool ideas of the movie is that each layer of
Speaker 1: dreams has successive time dilation. So when you go down
Speaker 1: into the first level, ten seconds in the real world
Speaker 1: might correspond to a minute of dream time, and as
Speaker 1: you go deeper, the ten seconds might correspond to a
Speaker 1: year or a decade of dream time. So the idea
Speaker 1: in the movie is that dream time does not correspond
Speaker 1: to real time. Now. It's a terrific movie, and if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, you should. But there's this question
Speaker 1: which lots of people have wondered about, which is, how
Speaker 1: would you know if that's true? How would you know
Speaker 1: whether dream time matches real time or not? Now you
Speaker 1: might feel like they don't correspond. And this is in
Speaker 1: part because sometimes you wake up from a dream and
Speaker 1: you want to tell someone about it, but the telling
Speaker 1: of the dream often seems to take a long time,
Speaker 1: even if the dream only took you a second. And
Speaker 1: in the last episode, I touched on why this can
Speaker 1: be confusing because sometimes you have to explain a bunch
Speaker 1: of background details, and sometimes you have false memories in
Speaker 1: the dream that need to be included, and so it
Speaker 1: sometimes takes time to get the whole thing put into words.
Speaker 1: So it can be difficult to answer whether dream time
Speaker 1: and real time correspond. But today we're going to go
Speaker 1: one step deeper. We're going to ask is there a
Speaker 1: way that you could actually test this? Now, think about
Speaker 1: what a difficult question this is, because it would require
Speaker 1: somebody to be inside of their dream, and somehow they
Speaker 1: would need to communicate with you what they are experiencing.
Speaker 1: Privately in their head. Now that sounds totally impossible under
Speaker 1: normal circumstances, But the question is, could you ever be
Speaker 1: inside a dream and figure out how to communicate outside
Speaker 1: of the dream, Or even better, could we think of
Speaker 1: a way to get bi directional communications so that someone
Speaker 1: outside can communicate with you in your dream and then
Speaker 1: you communicate back out to them. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: there is a way to do that, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about lucid dreaming, and this is when a sleeper realizes
Speaker 1: that he or she is dreaming and then is able
Speaker 1: to take some control over the plot of their dream.
Speaker 1: They might choose to fly, or they can try to
Speaker 1: control other people's actions, or generally just manipulate the physical
Speaker 1: world of the dream. So here's my analogy. You know
Speaker 1: those kids rides at the amusement park where you're sitting
Speaker 1: in a car and you can steer the wheel, but
Speaker 1: the wheel doesn't actually do anything. You're just on a
Speaker 1: track and the car just follows wherever the track goes.
Speaker 1: So imagine if you could get the steering wheel to
Speaker 1: work and actually steer off that track. That's what a
Speaker 1: lucid dream is instead of you always being the follower
Speaker 1: in your dream, you are now the driver. Now, to
Speaker 1: many people, lucid dreaming might sound like a concept straight
Speaker 1: out of science fiction, but it's a well documented state
Speaker 1: of sleep. A dreamer can become aware that they are dreaming,
Speaker 1: and this awareness can from a faint recognition of the
Speaker 1: dream state to a more profound acuity where the dreamer
Speaker 1: takes control over their own actions and manipulates their environment. Now,
Speaker 1: to understand this, we need to remember what we talked
Speaker 1: about in the last two episodes, which is that our
Speaker 1: sleep during the night moves through various phases. One of
Speaker 1: these is called the rapid eye movement stage of sleep,
Speaker 1: or REM sleep, and this is where our vivid dreams occur,
Speaker 1: and it's during REM sleep that lucid dreaming is most
Speaker 1: likely to take place. Now, I mentioned last week that
Speaker 1: during REM sleep, our body's major muscles are paralyzed, which
Speaker 1: prevents us from acting out our dreams, and this is
Speaker 1: also true during a lucid dream. But certain other parts
Speaker 1: of the brain, especially those involved in self awareness and
Speaker 1: executive function. These become more active when you're having a
Speaker 1: lucid dream, so we usually think of brains as having
Speaker 1: two possible states. You're either awake or you're asleep, but
Speaker 1: being in a lucid dream is somewhere in between, and
Speaker 1: the brainwave activity measured by EEG is different from normal
Speaker 1: rem sleep. So this makes lucid dreaming a unique state
Speaker 1: of consciousness where the dreaming mind wakes up but the
Speaker 1: body remains in the sleep state. So the first question
Speaker 1: is how do you do this? How do you become
Speaker 1: lucid in a dream? Sometimes, if you're very lucky, a
Speaker 1: lucid dream will happen. Accidentally. I had won many years
Speaker 1: ago when I was in a dream where I was
Speaker 1: at my high school locker bay with all my classmates,
Speaker 1: and it slowly dawned on me that I was in
Speaker 1: a dream and that none of this was real, and
Speaker 1: I was able to take control of my dream. But
Speaker 1: it only lasted a few seconds before I woke up up.
Speaker 1: But lucid dream efficionados can train themselves in a variety
Speaker 1: of ways that we'll talk about to have lucidity more
Speaker 1: often and for longer. The main technique involves setting an
Speaker 1: intention just before going to sleep to look for signs
Speaker 1: that you're dreaming. Little clues that something doesn't quite make sense,
Speaker 1: and then the idea is if you see those things
Speaker 1: that will alert you that you are inside a dream,
Speaker 1: and then you can try to take control. The general
Speaker 1: story is that if we get good enough at questioning reality,
Speaker 1: we can then pass more easily into lucid dreaming. So
Speaker 1: what is lucid dreaming all about? And how can you
Speaker 1: get good at it? To explore this in depth, I
Speaker 1: called up my friend Jonathan Barrent JB. As he goes by.
Speaker 1: He worked for many years at Google, including at X
Speaker 1: the Moonshot Factory, and he is a connoisseur of lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming and he lectures at Stanford about it. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to get his take on this rare and amazing
Speaker 1: version of consciousness. So, Jonathan, what is a lucid dream?
Speaker 2: A lucid dream is any dream we're actually aware that
Speaker 2: you are dreaming.
Speaker 1: What got you interested in lucid dreaming?
Speaker 2: There was a book called The Shaping Room, and it
Speaker 2: was a fictional book, but the character in it had
Speaker 2: the ability to imagine these landscapes. He would actually put
Speaker 2: his hand in this clay and I just got curious,
Speaker 2: and I think, you know, one day in a bookstore,
Speaker 2: I came across Stephen Laberge's exploring the world of lucid dreaming,
Speaker 2: and I read that and I realized, like, wow, there's
Speaker 2: actually a way to get into a state of consciousness
Speaker 2: where you can envision different dreamscapes and you can have
Speaker 2: some measure of control. And I was hooked ever since.
Speaker 1: And for anyone who doesn't know, Stephen Laberge is a
Speaker 1: colleague of ours who is a century the pioneer in
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. And so the question is, JB, what are
Speaker 1: the best ways that somebody can train up to allow
Speaker 1: themselves to have a lucid dream. Sure, there's a few
Speaker 1: key steps. The first one is working on dream recall.
Speaker 1: You want to get to a place where you can
Speaker 1: remember two, three, maybe even four dreams a night. So
Speaker 1: you know, having a dream journal, having the intention to
Speaker 1: remember your dreams is you know, the first key. As
Speaker 1: you build your dream journal, you're going to find what
Speaker 1: are sometimes called dream signs. You'll find that there are
Speaker 1: some certain patterns, like for me, if a dream sign
Speaker 1: is being back in Indiana, where I was from. And
Speaker 1: so as you start to learn your dream signs, you
Speaker 1: can then start to anchor on that being something that
Speaker 1: triggers lucidity. If I can just clarify for the listeners,
Speaker 1: a dream sign meaning a sign that you are dreaming exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're looking for these sign posts because we don't
Speaker 2: naturally question reality right now, we're not even questioning that
Speaker 2: this might be a dream. But we because we are
Speaker 2: often fooled in most of the dreams we have, we
Speaker 2: don't have that recognition. So you need cues, and we
Speaker 2: call those dream signs. And the more you journal about
Speaker 2: your dreams, the more you'll find some patterns. So that's
Speaker 2: the first step, is you have your dream journaling and
Speaker 2: you have your dream signs.
Speaker 1: So that you can get good at recognizing I am
Speaker 1: I must be in a dream right now?
Speaker 2: Correct. Now. There are some ways that have been really
Speaker 2: scientifically studied and rather robustly to ensure you have sort
Speaker 2: of a maximum chance. And so one of those is
Speaker 2: the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams. And so that means,
Speaker 2: as you are going to bed, you can say, next
Speaker 2: time I'm dreaming, I want to remember that I'm dreaming.
Speaker 2: You sort of place this little hook and they call
Speaker 2: that prospective memory where you're trying to remember something in
Speaker 2: the future. Now, you can make it even easier on
Speaker 2: yourself if you wake yourself up after about three or
Speaker 2: four hours of sleep, and that method is called the
Speaker 2: wake back to bed. Why, well, you get through most
Speaker 2: of the denser part of your sleep at the first
Speaker 2: part of your night, the slow wave sleep, the restorative sleep,
Speaker 2: and then the latter half is more rem sleep. So
Speaker 2: if you wake yourself up after three or four hours
Speaker 2: and then you do that mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming, say,
Speaker 2: next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember I'm dreaming. Well,
Speaker 2: you chances are you'll go directly into REM. And when
Speaker 2: you go directly into REM after having slept for four
Speaker 2: hours and maybe being up for a little bit, you're
Speaker 2: going to be more likely to actually see that trigger
Speaker 2: and remember it that you're actually in a lucid dream.
Speaker 2: That's one of the most effective ways to become a
Speaker 2: lucid dreamer.
Speaker 1: Let me just understand it. It's what do you mean
Speaker 1: I want to remember that I'm dreaming? You mean I
Speaker 1: want to recognize that I'm dreaming. Yes, okay, yes, So
Speaker 1: you're in a dream and you say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm back in Indiana. This doesn't seem real, I must
Speaker 1: be in a dream. And so then what do you do.
Speaker 2: When you recognize or you think you recognize, it's good
Speaker 2: to do what's called a reality check. You want to
Speaker 2: see are you truly in a dream state? And so
Speaker 2: there's been lots of different reality checks along the way.
Speaker 2: Some people look at their hand. That was popularized by
Speaker 2: Carlos Cassandra and his books on the Pathways of Dreaming.
Speaker 1: Why look at your hand? What are you looking for?
Speaker 2: Well, when you look at your hand in a dream,
Speaker 2: it just doesn't look like a five fingered hand. Often
Speaker 2: there'll be like a sixth finger. It will it will
Speaker 2: have some sort of blurring, you know, to it for
Speaker 2: some reason. Although the mind can recreate many, many things
Speaker 2: with exquisite detail and dreams, it has trouble recreating a
Speaker 2: perfect hand.
Speaker 1: This sounds like Dolly, yeah. So the idea is you
Speaker 1: get in the habit of looking at your hand and
Speaker 1: if it looks odd, then you say, why does my
Speaker 1: hand look so odd? And then you think, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I must be dreaming.
Speaker 2: That's the idea, right, that's right, that's the idea. Other
Speaker 2: people might try to fly. Obviously, you jump up and
Speaker 2: gravity holds you down, then you know you're most likely
Speaker 2: in this reality, which lucid dreamers like to call consensus reality.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's another one that's kind of interesting
Speaker 2: that if you pinch your nose and try to breathe,
Speaker 2: which I wasn't able to do, but in a dream,
Speaker 2: there's no constriction and you actually will breathe right through that.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of an unusual reality check. There's many
Speaker 2: of them, but the main thing is to have one
Speaker 2: or two reality checks that you can do both during
Speaker 2: the day at a time like this, and then when
Speaker 2: you are you know, have some sort of recognition that
Speaker 2: you're in a dream, you can perform that reality check
Speaker 2: and then it'll either pass or fail.
Speaker 1: So the idea is to get in the habit of
Speaker 1: doing reality checks, like seeing if you can breathe with
Speaker 1: your nose pinched, or whether you can see your hand.
Speaker 1: Another one that I'm fond of is you put your
Speaker 1: you know, your thumbnail up on your tooth and you
Speaker 1: try to flick your tooth off, and in consensus re reality,
Speaker 1: your tooth doesn't come off. But often what will happen
Speaker 1: in a dream is your tooth goes flying off into
Speaker 1: the air and you think, what the heck just happened?
Speaker 1: You think, oh, yes, I must be in a dream.
Speaker 2: That's right. All those are better than what has been
Speaker 2: popularized in the movie Inception, which is the spinning top.
Speaker 2: Of course that makes for a good graphic and a
Speaker 2: good movie, but that's not really a great reality check.
Speaker 2: Any of these other ones that we've talked about are
Speaker 2: much better.
Speaker 1: Wait, I had forgotten about the spinning top. Why what
Speaker 1: were they doing? And why is that not a good check?
Speaker 2: So you know, Leonardo's character spins it, and if it
Speaker 2: falls down, then he knows he's in a that he's
Speaker 2: in consensus reality. But if it keeps on spinning, then
Speaker 2: he's in a dream. And of course the movie ends
Speaker 2: with this you know, undefined state of like who knows
Speaker 2: if this whole movie was a dream, But you know,
Speaker 2: in an actual dream, you know, when you're spinning, there's
Speaker 2: no evidence that the top will keep on spinning in
Speaker 2: a lucid dream versus you know, fall down. Much more
Speaker 2: tried and true methods are the ones that we've talked about.
Speaker 2: The only other one that gets, you know, a little
Speaker 2: bit closer to something like that is a light switch.
Speaker 2: For some reason, when you flip light switches in lucid dreams,
Speaker 2: they tend not to work. But the by far the
Speaker 2: most robust one that with the science behind it, is
Speaker 2: one that we haven't mentioned, So that one is looking
Speaker 2: at a piece of text, so something that's been written,
Speaker 2: and that could be you know, could you know, be
Speaker 2: your watch? You know, twelve thirty nine. You look away
Speaker 2: and then you look back, and indeed it's the same.
Speaker 2: And so Leberg's i think, was the first to study
Speaker 2: that and found about eighty to eighty five percent of
Speaker 2: the time that was a reliable measure that the brain
Speaker 2: doesn't recreate.
Speaker 1: You say, it's the same in consensus reality, but in
Speaker 1: a dream when you look back at the clock, it
Speaker 1: is different.
Speaker 2: It's different, yes, And that's because there's no sensory constraints
Speaker 2: in the dream, right. And so I think one of
Speaker 2: the one of the interesting things that Lebert's used to say,
Speaker 2: and he was, you know, my mentor for years, and
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful for all the things that I learned
Speaker 2: from him. He said that dreaming is really perceiving without
Speaker 2: sensory constraints, and perceiving is dreaming with sensory constraints. It's
Speaker 2: a little bit of a play on words, but it's
Speaker 2: really getting across a fairly important piece of meaning that
Speaker 2: the dreaming mechanism and the perceiving mechanisms are very very similar.
Speaker 1: So let's unpack that for the listeners. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that, you know, you just take vision, for example,
Speaker 1: only five percent of the input to the visual cortex
Speaker 1: is actually coming from the retinas, from the eyeballs, and
Speaker 1: all the rest is internally generated. And so this is
Speaker 1: why you can have dreams, for example, where your eyes
Speaker 1: are closed but you're having full, rich, visual experience, because
Speaker 1: it's just this machinery running on its own without the
Speaker 1: little bit of modulation that comes in from your eyes.
Speaker 1: And so this is the sense in which when we're
Speaker 1: awake it's like awake dreaming. It's the same processes that
Speaker 1: we have when we're seeing when we're dreaming, it's just
Speaker 1: that when your eyes are open, things are anchored a
Speaker 1: bit more. I'm just unpacking this. So this is what
Speaker 1: you mean when you say, actually, how do you phrase it?
Speaker 2: Perception is Perception is dreaming with sensory constraints, and then
Speaker 2: you can you flip.
Speaker 1: It so you're anchored to what's in front of you.
Speaker 1: But otherwise it's the same process as dreaming. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: what was the other half of the sentence?
Speaker 2: Dreaming is perceiving without sensory constraints, got it, okay?
Speaker 1: Right, in the sense that your brain is doing its thing,
Speaker 1: but it's not tied to what's actually on a wristwatch.
Speaker 1: It gets to invent what's on the watch at every moment.
Speaker 2: Right now. One of the interesting studies that Stephen Labers
Speaker 2: did and then Philips Embardo also one of your colleagues
Speaker 2: at Stanford is they wanted to design experiment that could
Speaker 2: you know, actually prove this, and I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: It was published in twenty eighteen in Nature Communications. And
Speaker 2: as you're very well familiar, the eyes when they lock
Speaker 2: onto something like a finger and they trace it, they
Speaker 2: have a smooth pursuit.
Speaker 1: So when you're hold on when you're moving your finger
Speaker 1: back and forth in front of you, just for listeners,
Speaker 1: your eyes are smoothly moving back and forth with your finger,
Speaker 1: as opposed to if you're not moving your finger and
Speaker 1: you just try to move your eyes to the left
Speaker 1: and right. Your eyes make jumps. They go jump jump, jump, jump,
Speaker 1: and then they go jump jump jump, the other way.
Speaker 1: Those are called secods scots.
Speaker 2: Yes, So with that in mind and with you know
Speaker 2: that understanding of our neurobiology, they designed a clever experiment
Speaker 2: where they had participants look at their finger in consensus
Speaker 2: reality and then just trace a circle. And then they
Speaker 2: had leads eog leads to measure you know, their eye
Speaker 2: movements electro oculargram, so measuring the potentials of the eyes.
Speaker 2: The eyes are pulled rise, so when you move the
Speaker 2: eyes just very you know, basic biopotential sensors can see it.
Speaker 1: So these are little electrodes you stick on to the
Speaker 1: outside of the eye and you can measure where the
Speaker 1: eye is located, whether it's looking up or down or
Speaker 1: left to right, even when the eyelids are closed.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yes, And so they measured that while people were
Speaker 2: tracing their finger and doing a circle, and it had
Speaker 2: as you would expect, that smooth pursuit seeing you know,
Speaker 2: the eye tracings in that. Then they had people you know,
Speaker 2: close their eyes while still awake and just imagine that,
Speaker 2: and so you know they can move their eyes, but
Speaker 2: as you just said, they have more psychotic movements when
Speaker 2: there's no anchor, when there's no finger to anchor on.
Speaker 1: So if I'm just imagining my finger moving with my
Speaker 1: eyes closed, I see jump jump, jump jump instead of
Speaker 1: smooth pursuit.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, So then they had these people go into
Speaker 2: a lucid dream and remember the dream task of actually
Speaker 2: putting their finger up their dream finger and watching it
Speaker 2: go around and much too. I think the surprise of many,
Speaker 2: it mirrored much more closely. I could show you the
Speaker 2: plots in the paper much more closely to the waken
Speaker 2: reality and compared to the imagination where it was very jagged.
Speaker 1: So the idea is, when you're an elucid dream and
Speaker 1: you're imagining your finger moving back and forth, your eyes
Speaker 1: are making something more like smooth pursuit because it's like
Speaker 1: actually seeing it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's kind of amazing because then it goes
Speaker 2: back to what we were just saying that dreaming is
Speaker 2: perceiving without sensory constraints, and perceiving is dreaming, And so
Speaker 2: the mechanisms are very similar. I'm not saying that they're identical,
Speaker 2: but they are very similar, and I think that just
Speaker 2: opens up to a lot of interesting possibilities for lucid
Speaker 2: dream research.
Speaker 1: Now we jumped straight into something which is doing an
Speaker 1: experiment with lucid dreaming. But I just want to fill
Speaker 1: out a little bit more so everyone gets this. So
Speaker 1: let's say I look at some texts in a book
Speaker 1: and the text doesn't really make sense, and I look
Speaker 1: back and the text is different. I might think, Wow,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Oh wait, I must be dreaming,
Speaker 1: and then I can transition into making it a lucid dream.
Speaker 1: So what happens when I turn lucid?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when people turn lucid, they often, if it's
Speaker 2: the very first time, it might be a very short
Speaker 2: experience because they get kind of excited, and as they
Speaker 2: get excited, more areas of the brain light up and
Speaker 2: they wake up. However, if they don't, or if it's
Speaker 2: maybe their second or third time, they can then really
Speaker 2: explore the world. They can look at the objects around them,
Speaker 2: they can touch them, feel them, they can taste them.
Speaker 2: All five senses are working in the dream world. They
Speaker 2: could travel to a different location. It's interesting to note
Speaker 2: that there's almost like skills that you can develop. It
Speaker 2: doesn't all just happen in your first lucid dream, but
Speaker 2: over time, you can do almost anything without the physical
Speaker 2: laws or the social laws of convention applying.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that you can do
Speaker 1: is follow the instructions of an experimenter who's told you
Speaker 1: when you fall asleep, I want you to look at
Speaker 1: your finger moving back and forth in your lucid dream.
Speaker 1: So they're actually doing something that they were told to
Speaker 1: do once they realize they are there.
Speaker 2: That's correct. Yeah, remembering the dream task that in and
Speaker 2: of itself is a skill. It takes a while because
Speaker 2: you're so enamored with the lucid dream world and all
Speaker 2: the possibilities, but it can get to a place where
Speaker 2: you can remember, Hey, I had this intention, I'm supposed
Speaker 2: to do this because of an experiment that I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Or oh, I wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower
Speaker 2: and see, you know, what does it look like from
Speaker 2: the Eiffel Tower because I have a trip coming up
Speaker 2: to Paris. I want to see if it compares all
Speaker 2: kinds of very interesting things. Both can be formal experiments
Speaker 2: or does self experiments great?
Speaker 1: And now what allows the experiment to take place is
Speaker 1: that there's a way that you, as the lucid dreamer,
Speaker 1: can communicate with the outside world. And this idea of
Speaker 1: hooking up an electro ocular gram so you can see
Speaker 1: where the eyes are pointing. This is one way that
Speaker 1: you can talk with the outside world. So besides the
Speaker 1: thing of following your finger, what are some other examples
Speaker 1: where you can talk to the experimenter through your eye movements.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, that was sort of the fundamental piece that Stephen,
Speaker 2: you know, contributed to the science this left right, left
Speaker 2: right signal. So it can and it's become the de
Speaker 2: facto uh signal that somebody is actually in a lucid state.
Speaker 2: So just unpack that a little bit. You know, sleep
Speaker 2: scientists they have characteristics that they look for that they
Speaker 2: can and say definitively somebody is asleep. You know. That's
Speaker 2: when you have an EEG hooked up to your scalp
Speaker 2: and the eye leads and often a chin lead to
Speaker 2: measure the muscle movement. You can definitively say somebody is
Speaker 2: asleep and that they're in rim. And then when you
Speaker 2: see that sharp coordinated left right, left right, that is
Speaker 2: just a clear sign of the eyes that somebody is
Speaker 2: actually becoming lucid.
Speaker 1: Specifically, the subject is told when you realize you are
Speaker 1: in a lucid dream, and why you look left and
Speaker 1: then right and left and then right.
Speaker 2: That's correct, yes, And so that was established, you know,
Speaker 2: in the early eighties with part of his PhD work
Speaker 2: at Stanford and since then has been the gold standard. Now,
Speaker 2: if you think about that, though, what could you also
Speaker 2: do with that eye movement? You don't just have to
Speaker 2: signal lucidity. You could signal other things. You could actually
Speaker 2: pass information based on let's just say the number of
Speaker 2: left right, left, right. And in fact, that was some
Speaker 2: of the you know, kind of co or thinking that
Speaker 2: went into a series of experiments that I participated in
Speaker 2: along with kin Power and Karen Conkly that are just
Speaker 2: fascinating that you know, we could we could talk about.
Speaker 2: But essentially we took it one step further where we
Speaker 2: wondered if you could get information into the dream, that
Speaker 2: the dreamer could receive that information, do something with it,
Speaker 2: and then communicate it back out.
Speaker 1: Great, what's an example.
Speaker 2: Okay, this may not be the most fun example, but
Speaker 2: we took math problems as just a very simple way
Speaker 2: to actually approve could we get information into a dream
Speaker 2: such as what is six minus three? For example? And
Speaker 2: you know, could the dreamer hear that and then could
Speaker 2: they respond with three sets of left, right, left, right,
Speaker 2: and that became you know, one of the things that
Speaker 2: we found to be fairly reproducible were simple math problems
Speaker 2: that the dreamer did not know in advance, but then
Speaker 2: have to do the calculation and then respond back with
Speaker 2: the appropriate number of vibe movements.
Speaker 1: So you haven't yet told us how you got the information.
Speaker 2: In yes, So, as it turns out, when the brain
Speaker 2: is sleeping, it doesn't completely shut off from external stimuli.
Speaker 2: And I think we all have probably had this experience
Speaker 2: where an alarm goes off and somehow it gets incorporated
Speaker 2: into the dream. You know, it's a it's a siren,
Speaker 2: or it's a police car. We needed to have some
Speaker 2: auditory pathways available just to survive, right, we are sort
Speaker 2: of at risk when we're asleep. So we took advantage
Speaker 2: of that, the fact that there is selective pass through
Speaker 2: of auditory information into the dream. And so it was
Speaker 2: once the dreamer was in rem sleep, and once they
Speaker 2: signaled that they were loocid to the left, right, left, right,
Speaker 2: then the math problem was just spoken, just spoken in
Speaker 2: a you know, a regular normal voice.
Speaker 1: You mean, the experimenter says, it says, what is six
Speaker 1: minus three, right, yep, And the lucid dreamer hears that,
Speaker 1: and what is the experience of hearing it in a
Speaker 1: lucid dream.
Speaker 2: It varied, you know, because at that point, you know,
Speaker 2: the dreamer is incorporating this external stimuli into the dream.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One person reported that they were in kind of like
Speaker 2: a residential neighborhood and they were looking at the house
Speaker 2: numbers and when the experimenter said, you know, the six
Speaker 2: minus three, the house number just changed to that and
Speaker 2: they solve, you know, six minus three. So each dreamer
Speaker 2: reported a different sort of subjective experience of how it
Speaker 2: got incorporated, everything from just hearing the words themselves to
Speaker 2: seeing the dream somehow communicate the math problem.
Speaker 1: And once they have heard the question in some way,
Speaker 1: then they use their eye movement to, for example, look
Speaker 1: to the left three times, bang, bang bang, even though
Speaker 1: they're in their dream, they're talking to the outside world
Speaker 1: through their eye movements. That's correct. Cool. And you guys
Speaker 1: found that you could do this bi directional community.
Speaker 2: Yes, and not just us. There was four labs. It
Speaker 2: was a great collaboration across France, the Netherlands and USA.
Speaker 2: And you know, now it's not one hundred percent of
Speaker 2: the time. But you know, it was enough to sort
Speaker 2: of say, this is way above chance that people are
Speaker 2: actually hearing these and responding back with the right numbers,
Speaker 2: and so I think it'll lead to a lot of
Speaker 2: interesting future research.
Speaker 1: What happened when it didn't work, was it that people
Speaker 1: just simply didn't respond or they were answering the wrong question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by far it was a no response. There wasn't
Speaker 2: an actual response to the math equation. Now, we were
Speaker 2: also pretty harsh on ourselves. We had three independent scorers
Speaker 2: and there had to be a consensus that you know,
Speaker 2: it was the actual number of eye movements to match
Speaker 2: the math problem. So you know, with that, I think
Speaker 2: again it was rigorous science and that's what you need
Speaker 2: for something that's so unusual like this. But it was
Speaker 2: above chance. And one of the things that is was
Speaker 2: also a little bit challenging is you know, remember we
Speaker 2: talked about the dream task, and so we did get
Speaker 2: people waking up and saying, hey, I had the Lucid dream,
Speaker 2: but I'm sorry I forgot to signal, and so you know,
Speaker 2: that kind of shows that there is sort of a
Speaker 2: progression of skill that you can get Lucid but then
Speaker 2: to remember to signal that you get lucid is one
Speaker 2: thing that you need to do, and then to be
Speaker 2: able to hear the input is another thing that you
Speaker 2: need to do and then be able to communicate. So
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's multiple points of failure along the way.
Speaker 1: And did you guys do other tasks besides the math problem?
Speaker 2: The US group focused on the math problem, the other
Speaker 2: groups did. They did some interesting things around preferences. They
Speaker 2: wondered if preferences were the same, you know, in the
Speaker 2: dream world versus the outside world, and I think they
Speaker 2: found some you know, kind of interesting results there. It
Speaker 2: was almost like the dream the dream personality had some
Speaker 2: different preferences than the non dreaming personality. So that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1: Can you give us an example chocolate?
Speaker 2: You know, it's like, do you like chocolate? And the
Speaker 2: the outside was was yes, and the but the dreamer
Speaker 2: didn't like chocolate.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. And you know, there was a stety years ago
Speaker 1: which one of my favorites, which is asking the question
Speaker 1: of whether dream time corresponds to real time. And the
Speaker 1: way this was done is the loocid dreamer when they
Speaker 1: become lucid. They you know, give a signal and then
Speaker 1: what they do is they, let's say, look the other way,
Speaker 1: They look to the right, and they estimate five seconds
Speaker 1: inside their dream, and then they look to the right again.
Speaker 1: And of course in the outside world you can look
Speaker 1: at the signal on the electro oculogram and you find
Speaker 1: that in general, dream time corresponds to real time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that we liked the premise of Christopher
Speaker 2: Nolan's inception that you know each layer in the dream,
Speaker 2: you know the time changes, but we don't really have
Speaker 2: any evidence that you know, you can estimate and you
Speaker 2: can count that it's about the same. Now, it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean definitively that dream time can't be different, but I
Speaker 2: think that when people ask me, well, it seems like
Speaker 2: it was so long, what I come back with is like, well,
Speaker 2: think about a movie, and how does a movie feel
Speaker 2: to you. You can watch a two hour movie and
Speaker 2: it can be over a lifetime. There's cut scenes, right,
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, dreams are very similar. There's
Speaker 2: these cut scenes, and so they can make the experience
Speaker 2: of a twenty minute dream session can feel like you know, hours.
Speaker 2: But so far, the evidence shows that it's about the
Speaker 2: same amount of time.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, you know. I remember years ago I
Speaker 1: was on a road trip with a buddy and I
Speaker 1: fell asleep for just a second. I woke up and
Speaker 1: he had noticed that I just closed my eyes and
Speaker 1: then woke come up, and I told him about this
Speaker 1: dream that I had. But the dream took a long
Speaker 1: time to describe. But the dream itself was just a moment.
Speaker 1: In the dream, I was standing on a roof and
Speaker 1: I was looking over the city and the city was flooding,
Speaker 1: and I felt so guilty because I had left the
Speaker 1: sink on. I knew I had left to sink on
Speaker 1: and it was my fault that the city was flooding.
Speaker 1: The dream itself was just a second, but in order
Speaker 1: for me to explain it, I had to explain this false,
Speaker 1: implanted memory of having left the sink on and so on,
Speaker 1: and so often there's a lot of confusion about time
Speaker 1: this way. But yeah, I thought that was a fascinating
Speaker 1: study about dream time and real time being able to
Speaker 1: correspond that way. Okay, so JB, tell me about some
Speaker 1: other cool experiments that have been done in lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2: Sure, Well, one of the ones that I think is
Speaker 2: perhaps the most notable was nineteen eighty three. We have
Speaker 2: to go a ways back, but it's an interesting story.
Speaker 2: So there was this was when Stephen was doing his
Speaker 2: research and there was a grad student, Beverly de Orso.
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, not even the grad students
Speaker 2: under Stephen, you know, they don't always get lucid every
Speaker 2: night that they're hooked up to the machines, and it
Speaker 2: is very costly to hook up the folks, and so
Speaker 2: when they do get lucid, they're required to write down
Speaker 2: their dream in detail. Well, this one night, it's clear
Speaker 2: she got lucid, she did the signaling, but then there
Speaker 2: was nothing in the dream journal. And Stephen asked her,
Speaker 2: he said, you know betterly, why why is that you
Speaker 2: know that this is really important? She got kind of
Speaker 2: embarrassed and she said, well, I had sex in my dream.
Speaker 2: And He's like, that's nothing to being embarrassed about. How
Speaker 2: about we experiment and do that and she was up
Speaker 2: for it. And so Walter Greenleaf was part of this
Speaker 2: as well, a distinguished Stanford scholar, and so they were
Speaker 2: able to hook up additional equipment to you know, measure
Speaker 2: things that you would think would be necessary for orgasms
Speaker 2: such as vaginal blood flow and muscle contractions and things
Speaker 2: like that. Very scientific and so so the next night
Speaker 2: she went to sleep and she got lucid. And the
Speaker 2: funny part of the story is that she gets lucid,
Speaker 2: she's in the lab. She remembers the dream task, but
Speaker 2: then she sees she's in the lab with her lab
Speaker 2: mates and she's like, no, this isn't happening. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to write about this. So she flies out of
Speaker 2: the building and finds a random stranger to have her
Speaker 2: dream sex with, and then of course she wakes up
Speaker 2: and reports it. And it is quite amazing that all
Speaker 2: the responses that you would expect for a full sexual
Speaker 2: response were measured in the equipment.
Speaker 1: So she was able to achieve orgasm from a lucid dream,
Speaker 1: from a lucid dream, and they were able to measure
Speaker 1: it in consensus reality. So you mentioned the two things
Speaker 1: they're flying and having sex, which I understand are the
Speaker 1: two most popular things to do for people who become lucid.
Speaker 1: What else do people do when they become lucid?
Speaker 2: Those are by far the most common things. I think
Speaker 2: you know other people are they like to meet people.
Speaker 2: You know, there's sort of a desire because you can
Speaker 2: meet a celebrity or you can, you know, go to
Speaker 2: a novel place, drive fast cars. You know. One of
Speaker 2: the things that I thought was quite interesting. Robert Wagner
Speaker 2: is a long time practitioner and he writes many books,
Speaker 2: and I met him at a conference and one time
Speaker 2: he said, you know, Jamie, in my experience, for the
Speaker 2: first five years, people are very headen stick in their
Speaker 2: approach to lucid dreaming. But after that you get into
Speaker 2: the more interesting stuff where you can do more self
Speaker 2: exploration and things like that. So I think that was
Speaker 2: true in my own experience. And then as I've met
Speaker 2: other lucid dreamers, depending on how many years they've been
Speaker 2: lucid dreaming, they're either still driving fast cars and jumping
Speaker 2: off the buildings or they're doing other stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to this issue of how to
Speaker 1: lucid dream because I know a lot of listeners will
Speaker 1: want to start practicing that. So there's this issue of
Speaker 1: doing reality checking. You flick your tooth, you turn the
Speaker 1: light switches on and off, you look at texts like
Speaker 1: in a book or on your watch, You get in
Speaker 1: the habit of doing this all the time until such
Speaker 1: time that you do it and it doesn't work, and
Speaker 1: you think, wait, why didn't that work? And then you realize,
Speaker 1: but what technologies can help us move along to have
Speaker 1: lucid dreams?
Speaker 2: Well, the one technology is more pharmological, So there are
Speaker 2: some acetacoline enhancers that have been studied. So glant tomine
Speaker 2: is one of the ones that has been been studied
Speaker 2: and that does induce tends to increase the ability to
Speaker 2: have dreams and more vivid dreams, which then leads to
Speaker 2: lucid dreaming. So that's certainly one intervention that I would
Speaker 2: put in sort of the technology realm. You know, there
Speaker 2: are many kickstarter you know, this is interesting because I've
Speaker 2: tracked this for years. There's been many kickstarters since Steven's
Speaker 2: original Nova Dreamer, which was, you know, a mass that
Speaker 2: would flash lights when you became lucid.
Speaker 1: So wait, actually, let's let's let's zoom in on that
Speaker 1: for one second. So the idea was you have a
Speaker 1: mask that's measuring your electro ocograms, measuring your eye movements,
Speaker 1: and it sees that you've gone into rems sleep, you've
Speaker 1: gone into dream sleep. Your eyes are moving back and forth,
Speaker 1: and so then it flashes let's say, red lights at you.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that the dreamer is having this
Speaker 1: normal dream and thinks, wait, what are all these red
Speaker 1: lights going on? Why is everything flashing red? And then thinks, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: I must be inside a dream, and that what's the
Speaker 1: element that you need in order to turn lucid.
Speaker 2: Right, It's like a forced dream sign. So, because you
Speaker 2: remember we talked about how dream signs are the triggers, well,
Speaker 2: the red lights become something you can kind of bank on.
Speaker 2: So when you go to sleep, you can still do
Speaker 2: the mnemonic induction. You can say, next time I see
Speaker 2: flashing red lights, flashing stop signs, anything to do with redvite,
Speaker 2: I'm going to know that I'm dreaming. So you still
Speaker 2: practice that mnemonic induction, but it's just sort of guaranteed
Speaker 2: because you're going to introduce that stimuli directly.
Speaker 1: And how well do those work?
Speaker 2: Risingly not as well as you'd think. So you know,
Speaker 2: years later, I was looking at sort of the comparative.
Speaker 2: Every five or ten years, somebody does a meta analysis
Speaker 2: of all the different methods and stuff, and so you know,
Speaker 2: recently a meta analysis showed that that type of induction
Speaker 2: isn't as robust as one would think. You know, the
Speaker 2: best induction methods are really combinations of things that we've
Speaker 2: talked about. So when you combine reality checks with wake
Speaker 2: back to bed and if you you know, add an
Speaker 2: aceta coleen, you know, enhancer, the kind of the best
Speaker 2: results are fifty percent in you know, two or three nights,
Speaker 2: seemed to be in sort of the realm of possibility.
Speaker 2: But to date, there really hasn't been any technology like
Speaker 2: you know, the Nova dreamer, or there's you know, the
Speaker 2: REM dreamer, which doesn't really know if you're in REM,
Speaker 2: but it just sort of randomly, you know, flashes lights throughout.
Speaker 2: I've heard some researchers get their hands on something called
Speaker 2: the IBAND, but I don't think that's ever been really
Speaker 2: available to the general public.
Speaker 1: And what what is that? What is the I band?
Speaker 2: The I band is is very similar. It you know,
Speaker 2: measures the EEG and then you know, it flashes a
Speaker 2: red light you know, when when the dreamer is there.
Speaker 2: But I think one of the things that I learned
Speaker 2: from Stephen and as I've practiced lucid dreams and I've
Speaker 2: helped other people over the years, it really does come
Speaker 2: down to motivation. You know, he would say that that,
Speaker 2: you know, when he had to do his pH d,
Speaker 2: when he and to have loocent dreams in order to
Speaker 2: get that degree, that made all the difference. And and
Speaker 2: I think that's been my experience too. So if you
Speaker 2: have the motivation, if you know, if you learn enough
Speaker 2: about what's possible, then then you'll you'll have it. I
Speaker 2: mean the mind does respond. There's an element of just
Speaker 2: sort of the mind body connection of having this intention
Speaker 2: to enter this altered state of consciousness, and then you know,
Speaker 2: you're motivated to practice the reality checks. You're motivated to
Speaker 2: wake up after four and a half hours of sleep
Speaker 2: and stay up for ten or fifteen minutes, and you know,
Speaker 2: rehearse a dream that you want to have. That's kind
Speaker 2: of we didn't talk that much about it, but if
Speaker 2: you do the wake back to bed method after waking
Speaker 2: up after four or five hours, you do want to
Speaker 2: sort of rehearse. You want to just sort of fill
Speaker 2: your mind with lucid dreaming. You know, the lucid dream
Speaker 2: you want to have, where you want to have it,
Speaker 2: what smells, And then as you lie down, you know
Speaker 2: you're telling yourself, I want to remember that I'm dreaming.
Speaker 2: The next time I'm dreaming, I want to recognize that
Speaker 2: I'm dreaming or remember that I'm dreaming, and then you're
Speaker 2: more you know, more likely. So that's sort of the
Speaker 2: best set of methods to have a lucid dream, but
Speaker 2: it takes a lot of motivation to do that.
Speaker 1: A couple of episodes, I talked about what happens when
Speaker 1: we're asleep and how the whole brain does this change
Speaker 1: over The whole factory of the brain switches over from
Speaker 1: waking state to sleeping state, and you know, we lose
Speaker 1: consciousness as one of the results of that. And what's
Speaker 1: so interesting about dreaming is it's a form that is
Speaker 1: like consciousness and lucid dreaming even more so, how do
Speaker 1: you see the relationship between the lucid dream and the
Speaker 1: conscious state.
Speaker 2: That's a great question and that's been sort of hotly
Speaker 2: debated in the dreaming world and the lucid dreaming world
Speaker 2: for some time. And because it is difficult to get
Speaker 2: subjects lucid with the expensive equipment like an fMRI, there's
Speaker 2: not a lot of neural correlates. But I will say
Speaker 2: there have been studies of like n of five, you know,
Speaker 2: n of six, and based on that data, I believe
Speaker 2: it is a hybrid state. And that's you know what
Speaker 2: the authors of that study, Ursula ass is the lead
Speaker 2: on that that it's a hybrid state. It's not quite
Speaker 2: rem and it's definitely not quite waking, but it's it
Speaker 2: has little characteristics of both. And again that's sort of
Speaker 2: objective measures from the EEG and from fMRI, like what
Speaker 2: regions of the brain are activated versus not, and what
Speaker 2: type of power and amplitude. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm honest, my own experience is fairly similar that
Speaker 2: when I'm in a lucid state there, I'm most often
Speaker 2: entering that from a period of awakening, you know, so
Speaker 2: like the wake back to bed method, and then you
Speaker 2: get into this sort of hybrid state. And again many
Speaker 2: people subjectively know what you're talking about. You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was on that car trip and I zoned out
Speaker 2: for a little bit, and then you know, I had
Speaker 2: a weird hypnogogic imagery or I had a weird thought
Speaker 2: that just didn't feel like it was mine. And so
Speaker 2: I think it is hybrid. And if you need a
Speaker 2: lot of sleep, you'll be a deep sleeper and you
Speaker 2: won't have a lucid dream if you are able to.
Speaker 2: If you get up multiple times in the night, you're
Speaker 2: probably more likely to have a lucid dream because you're
Speaker 2: entering waking state into the dream state multiple times.
Speaker 1: You know, when I think about lucid dreams, I think
Speaker 1: about Stephen Leberge as the guy who pioneered all this.
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious, was there any indication of these
Speaker 1: in the literature, either the scientific literature or in writing
Speaker 1: before Stephen.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a researcher Keith Hearn in Europe right about
Speaker 2: the same time as Steve that was doing some of
Speaker 2: these experiments with left right, left right, and so he
Speaker 2: certainly gets mentioned a lot of times. And then you can,
Speaker 2: you know, go back to you know, nineteen early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and you'll see some writings of sort of this idea
Speaker 2: of being conscious in the dream state. Ben Eden, I believe,
Speaker 2: is who they cred that to. Some have even pointed
Speaker 2: farther back. I can't verify whether Aristotle talked about this
Speaker 2: state of consciousness or not, but I tend to focus
Speaker 2: on the more modern folk.
Speaker 1: Are there any downsides to lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2: So some people have raised that concern, and I think
Speaker 2: it's a good concern to raise. And the good news
Speaker 2: is people have actually started to study it. You know,
Speaker 2: lucid dreaming research has really exploded in the last ten years.
Speaker 2: And so as that research has gone forward, of course
Speaker 2: people are looking for kind of novel angles, and so
Speaker 2: one of the novel angles in the last five years
Speaker 2: is can you show some some downside. So the things
Speaker 2: that they looked at were does it increase dissociative behavior?
Speaker 2: And so, you know, because in a lucid dream state,
Speaker 2: you know, you're in this kind of altered state of
Speaker 2: consciousness that might even share some characteristics of things that
Speaker 2: are perceived as negative where you're disassociating from yourself that's
Speaker 2: not normally a good thing in waking life. And they
Speaker 2: looked at things like sleep quality. Does you know people
Speaker 2: practicing the white back to bed method, does that interrupt sleep?
Speaker 2: Does that actually lead to less sleep? And then they
Speaker 2: looked at does it lead to nightmares? Are people, you know,
Speaker 2: with all this kind of flexibility, does it somehow introduce nightmares?
Speaker 2: And there haven't been a lot of studies maybe you know,
Speaker 2: five or less and I would say the consensus across
Speaker 2: this is that the most negative impact really is in
Speaker 2: the quality of sleep. You're just not sleeping as as deeply,
Speaker 2: and so you would I would never recommend that people
Speaker 2: try to lucid dream five nights, you know, a week.
Speaker 2: But all those other things that they looked at, they
Speaker 2: didn't find evidence for it. It didn't increase some sort
Speaker 2: of disassociative behavior, and there really was more positive mood impact.
Speaker 2: People really do feel good about lucidream. It's it's like
Speaker 2: almost like an accomplishment, and they tend to talk about
Speaker 2: it and that leads to sort of an elevated mood.
Speaker 2: But it does take away from a good night's sleep,
Speaker 2: and therefore not something people are going to do every The.
Speaker 1: Other social disadvantage, of course, is that if you're constantly
Speaker 1: walking into a room and flicking the lights on and
Speaker 1: off and seeing if you can knock your tooth off,
Speaker 1: people might think you're strange.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it's fair.
Speaker 1: So what's the research that's really exciting that's going on
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: So I think that one of the groups that is
Speaker 2: receiving a lot of funding is Martin Dressler out of
Speaker 2: the Netherlands. He has been gathering more and more students
Speaker 2: on funding that he's getting. We caught up briefly at
Speaker 2: World Sleep in Brazil and really interesting experiments that really
Speaker 2: are building on the things that we've already talked about.
Speaker 2: So think about the natural extension. If you can have
Speaker 2: two way communication between an experimenter and a dreamer, is
Speaker 2: there anything scientifically or from an engineering perspective that prevents
Speaker 2: that happening from a dreamer to another dreamer? And the
Speaker 2: answer is no, So you can bet that some people
Speaker 2: are working on that, and you know, might even be
Speaker 2: making PhD thesises out of a dreamer to dreamer communication.
Speaker 2: There's another group that I know less about, but they're
Speaker 2: certainly publishing a lot of papers. I haven't met these
Speaker 2: researchers in person, but they have published on mind controlled
Speaker 2: avatars from within the Lucid Dream. Because if you think
Speaker 2: about it, you know, in the BCI world, it's not
Speaker 2: that difficult to hook somebody up to an ECG and
Speaker 2: have them control some sort of robot or some sort
Speaker 2: of avatar. Well, of course, a natural extension is like, well,
Speaker 2: in a lucid dream, we've just said, you can send
Speaker 2: off signals with your eyes, could you use that to
Speaker 2: control an avatar? And so indeed they published a paper
Speaker 2: on controlling a car avatar just from within the lucid dream. So,
Speaker 2: you know, just to make sure we know what we're
Speaker 2: talking about. They're in a lucid dream. Their task is
Speaker 2: to somehow drive a dream car, but they've been hooked
Speaker 2: up in a BCI format to actually driving a car
Speaker 2: in you know the.
Speaker 1: Lab by the way, BCI's brain computer interface. So but
Speaker 1: what in this case EEG or what were they hooked up.
Speaker 2: With EEG and EMG?
Speaker 1: So, okay, electromiagram, so it's measuring their muscle. Where was
Speaker 1: the EMG hooked up the EMG? I'm not quite sure where.
Speaker 1: I again, I haven't looked at that one in detail.
Speaker 1: I sort of skimmed.
Speaker 2: It and thought this would be definitely worth, you know,
Speaker 2: talking to them and finding out more. The other thing
Speaker 2: that they did that I've always wanted to do. I
Speaker 2: what's kind of fun for me is I've had a
Speaker 2: lot of these ideas over the years, and then now
Speaker 2: I get to see researchers implement them. The other study
Speaker 2: they did was what happens if you consume some sort
Speaker 2: of pharmological substance in a lucid dream says, you know,
Speaker 2: if we think about the Beverly de orso clearly, you know,
Speaker 2: by having an engagement of a certain type in the dream,
Speaker 2: such as sex, it led to a physiological response. So
Speaker 2: a natural research question is like, how far does that go?
Speaker 2: When you drink alcohol in a dream? Does it have
Speaker 2: any kind of physiological effect if you take ritilin or
Speaker 2: if you take some sort of you know, illegal substance.
Speaker 2: And they have a paper on that, and it turns
Speaker 2: out that psychoactive substances taken in the dream have a
Speaker 2: stronger perceived effect by the dreamer then like let's say alcohol.
Speaker 2: And then they again, according to their research, about twenty
Speaker 2: percent of the respondents who were able to remember to
Speaker 2: do the intake had some subjective feeling of that even
Speaker 2: after waking up. Now again, I think that's the type
Speaker 2: of research that like, hmm, that's very interesting. But I
Speaker 2: want to see that replicated, and I want to see
Speaker 2: a you know, with you know, thirty people, forty fifty people. So,
Speaker 2: but I think it's just it's interesting. It's an interesting thought.
Speaker 1: What is the claim there though, that they're seeing the
Speaker 1: placebo effect of a psychedelic they're just you know, when
Speaker 1: someone says, hey, you've taken this drug and then you
Speaker 1: feel like you're drugged even though you're not. That's the
Speaker 1: idea of that exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's even the title of the paper is
Speaker 2: is like, you know, placebo without deception. So it's a
Speaker 2: it's a known, you know thing that you are just taking,
Speaker 2: you know, something that is not real quote unquote in
Speaker 2: the dream. But then the placebo effect is is really
Speaker 2: well studied. I mean, you know, even again some some
Speaker 2: colleagues at Stanford are looking into that quite quite extensively.
Speaker 2: So I think that's a novel and a very interesting
Speaker 2: application of lucidreaming.
Speaker 1: It'll be really interesting to see whether this leads to
Speaker 1: people being able to heal anything about themselves this way
Speaker 1: using a placebo effect with you know, medications in a
Speaker 1: dream and their leg gets better or some disease state
Speaker 1: they have.
Speaker 2: That's right well, And I think the other thing that
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about that's worth mentioning probably one of
Speaker 2: the most research areas that's currently therapeutic is PTSD, and
Speaker 2: so they're using PTSD and lucid dreaming to help people
Speaker 2: overcome that trauma. And so if, especially if there's a
Speaker 2: reoccurring nightmare, it's a bit counterintuitive, but what the participant
Speaker 2: has been told is that whatever you're dreaming, even though
Speaker 2: it's very negative and it causes, you know, a strong reaction,
Speaker 2: it's really a disassociated part of yourself. And so in
Speaker 2: the Lucid dream, you have an opportunity to consciously, in
Speaker 2: a very safe environment, you know, act in a different way.
Speaker 2: And so an example of this that I'll just you know,
Speaker 2: I'll make up a fictitious example, but it gets the
Speaker 2: point across. Let's say that I have a dream and
Speaker 2: in that dream, a robber you know, comes in and
Speaker 2: breaks into my house and is you know, strangling my son,
Speaker 2: and you know, Lucid dreamer, and they say, I get Lucid.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, this is you know, my dream sign happened.
Speaker 2: This is my house, but it's in Indiana, And you know,
Speaker 2: I might be tempted to turn into the Incredible Hulk
Speaker 2: and just throw that robber, you know, out of the building. Well,
Speaker 2: sure I could do that, but then if this really
Speaker 2: is a recurring nightmare, it's going to come back. Instead,
Speaker 2: if I recognize it's a dream, and I remember what
Speaker 2: my therapist has told me and say, hey, this robber
Speaker 2: is really a part of me. Then I show it love.
Speaker 2: I actually say, hey, you want to tell me something.
Speaker 2: I love you. You're just a part of me. What's
Speaker 2: the message you have for me? And this robber might
Speaker 2: turn to me, he might transform. People talk about it
Speaker 2: transforming into something beautiful, and might say, you're neglecting you
Speaker 2: know that the play. There's you, you're you know, your
Speaker 2: inner child wants to have more fun or more and
Speaker 2: more play. And that's just, you know, kind of a
Speaker 2: light example, but there are many examples that are you know,
Speaker 2: very significant and that people have had substantial healing where
Speaker 2: that you know, monster or that aggressor turns into something beautiful.
Speaker 2: And then often they'll talk about an experience of it
Speaker 2: kind of coming into their heart. And I think that
Speaker 2: is perhaps at this point in time, from everything I've seen,
Speaker 2: it's perhaps the most beneficial application of lucid dreaming is
Speaker 2: that you can reintegrate these difficult memories. You can reintegrate
Speaker 2: these difficult parts of your past because the environment's very
Speaker 2: safe and somehow you're operating below the conscious mind, you know,
Speaker 2: like this. Even though you have some conscious control, you
Speaker 2: still have about you know, ninety to ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of the dream is just generated outside.
Speaker 1: Of your control.
Speaker 2: So it's a really unique aspect.
Speaker 1: So there are all kinds of therapeutic roads that might
Speaker 1: be discovered in the future as we get better and
Speaker 1: better as a society at implementing lucid dreaming. So, JB,
Speaker 1: you've been exposed to lots of the great minds in
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. Has anyone else come across your path that
Speaker 1: said something influential to you?
Speaker 2: Yes? At Google, actually I found Ray Kurzweil. Many people
Speaker 2: may no Ray kurzwhile he's considered a futurist, a great thinker,
Speaker 2: has many patents under his name from his earlier engineering days.
Speaker 2: I found out that he was at Google and I
Speaker 2: came across some of his writings on his blog and
Speaker 2: he mentioned, you know, lucid dreaming. So I initiated contact
Speaker 2: with him and we had many good exchanges. And the
Speaker 2: way he described it I thought was very fascinating, you know,
Speaker 2: coming from an engineer's perspective, And he said, you know, JB,
Speaker 2: I was trained as an engineer, but in the Lucid
Speaker 2: dreaming state. I find that part of the mind that
Speaker 2: has these constraints that I've sort of learned are you know, hardwired,
Speaker 2: they get looser, and so I can in this sort
Speaker 2: of hybrid state, I can come up with new things
Speaker 2: that are inventive, and when I wake up, maybe you know,
Speaker 2: eighty percent of it really isn't feasible, it's breaking the
Speaker 2: laws of physics. But that twenty percent leads to something.
Speaker 2: And so that is part of why I did get
Speaker 2: quite excited about it, and I thought, you know, engineers
Speaker 2: or creative types really can ben ait fit from this.
Speaker 2: And you know, taking that one step, you know further,
Speaker 2: you might say, well, how what what exactly? Well, remember
Speaker 2: when we talked about you know, the first five years,
Speaker 2: you know, becomes a bit you know, hedonistic. After that, well,
Speaker 2: you can actually just call out to the dream world.
Speaker 2: You don't even have to invent a scenario. You can
Speaker 2: just say show me something beautiful. Let's say you're an
Speaker 2: artist and I've done that phrase and you know, out
Speaker 2: of the ground form this incredible marble, you know, statue
Speaker 2: that I wish I was, you know, a sculptor, and
Speaker 2: I think, you know, it's getting to that aspect that
Speaker 2: Ray talked about, like, you're in this unique state imagine
Speaker 2: as an inventor, as a writer, you could just prompt
Speaker 2: and so you know, when I see chat, GPT and
Speaker 2: prompt engineering, I immediately think of you need prompt engineering
Speaker 2: for lucid dreaming because you literally can just prompt your mind.
Speaker 2: Show me what you know. I'm most afraid of, show
Speaker 2: me something beautiful. Stephen's favorite question is show me the
Speaker 2: best version of myself. You know, that was the question
Speaker 2: that he thought, you know, leads to sort of the
Speaker 2: highest expression of what's possible. And so I would really
Speaker 2: encourage people to, you know, learn how to lose a
Speaker 2: dream and then think about what do they want to see,
Speaker 2: what do they want to create, what do they want
Speaker 2: to perhaps, you know, explore about themselves, because there's really
Speaker 2: no other place where you can do that that is
Speaker 2: so safe and it's just coming from your own mind
Speaker 2: and you don't need to use any substances, you know,
Speaker 2: to get into that state of consciousness.
Speaker 1: So that was my interview with Jonathan Barnt, and what
Speaker 1: we see is that first of all, achieving lucidity isn't easy,
Speaker 1: but if you practice and get good headed, there are
Speaker 1: opportunities for personal insight and problem solving and artistic inspiration,
Speaker 1: possibly overcoming nightmares, and all kinds of exploration. So as
Speaker 1: a reminder, if you want to try lucid dreaming, there
Speaker 1: are several techniques to pursue. First is keep a dream journal,
Speaker 1: write everything down from your dreams when you wake up.
Speaker 1: This is really the only way to do dream recall,
Speaker 1: so that you can then look across a bunch of
Speaker 1: your dreams and start to recognize dream signs. In other words,
Speaker 1: this sort of wacky thing shows up in my dreams
Speaker 1: a lot, but rarely or never in real life, so
Speaker 1: when you see it, you should be more likely to
Speaker 1: recognize that you are dreaming. Then there are all the
Speaker 1: techniques for reality testing. These all involve checking your environment
Speaker 1: several times a day to see whether you're dreaming. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you look at a digital clock and then
Speaker 1: you look away, and then you look back at the
Speaker 1: clock again to see if the time has changed in
Speaker 1: some weird way. The key is to get into the
Speaker 1: habit of doing this. Most of the time, you'll be
Speaker 1: doing this in real life and it won't change, And
Speaker 1: then at some point you'll do that habitually in a dream,
Speaker 1: and then you'll say, whoa or is John Nathan mentioned
Speaker 1: you can try pinching your nose and trying to breathe in.
Speaker 1: You get in the habit of doing that several times
Speaker 1: a day, and in real life you'll never be able
Speaker 1: to breathe in. But at some point you'll do this
Speaker 1: and you'll breathe in and you'll think, Wow, that's weird.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, And there are lots of techniques
Speaker 1: you can try here. Another one is placing your fingers
Speaker 1: against the palm of your other hand and trying to
Speaker 1: push them through. That won't work in real life, that
Speaker 1: can sometimes work in a dream. So think of what
Speaker 1: techniques you might want to use for reality testing. And
Speaker 1: the idea is that if you get in the habit
Speaker 1: of running these checks frequently during the day, it makes
Speaker 1: it more likely that you'll perform them in a dream,
Speaker 1: and that can trigger lucidity. There are several other kinds
Speaker 1: of complementary techniques, some of which Jonathan mentioned like the
Speaker 1: wake back to bed method, which involves waking yourself up
Speaker 1: after five to six hours of sleep, and you stay
Speaker 1: awake for a little bit and then you go act
Speaker 1: to sleep with the intention of entering a lucid dream. Now,
Speaker 1: this method works because you have more rem sleep in
Speaker 1: the second half of the night, and so that enhances
Speaker 1: the chances of becoming lucid, and most lucid dreamers find
Speaker 1: that combining techniques increases their success rate. Just be aware
Speaker 1: that this requires patience and a lot of practice. You
Speaker 1: probably won't achieve lucidity on your first try, but keep
Speaker 1: trying and you'll get there. Okay, So let's wrap up.
Speaker 1: This was the third of a three parter. The first
Speaker 1: wason Why Brains Sleep, The next was on why Brain's Dream,
Speaker 1: and this episode covered a rare and special form of dreaming,
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. So hopefully you've learned several things that you
Speaker 1: didn't previously know. But truthfully, there are still a lot
Speaker 1: of things that we still don't understand. As just one example,
Speaker 1: there's the issue of the false memories inside a dream.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned it to Jonathan Earl that I had
Speaker 1: had this one second micro sleep when I was on
Speaker 1: a road trip with a friend, and when trying to
Speaker 1: describe what happened, it took a long time. Now, the
Speaker 1: reason was that the dream itself was simply I was
Speaker 1: standing on the top of roof looking at a city flooding.
Speaker 1: But I had a whole set of false memories how
Speaker 1: I had left to sink on because I wasn't thinking
Speaker 1: and not taking appropriate responsibility, and I had all these
Speaker 1: feelings of guilt because it seemed so stupid that I
Speaker 1: had done that. I felt regret, And now I was
Speaker 1: in a situation of figuring out what this meant for
Speaker 1: the city and for me personally, and how much trouble
Speaker 1: I was going to be in, how guilty I felt
Speaker 1: about flooding everything. But the dream itself only took a
Speaker 1: fraction of a second. And the question is where did
Speaker 1: all the memories of having done that come from? And
Speaker 1: why were they so believable to me in that moment?
Speaker 1: And another related question I've always had is how can
Speaker 1: characters in our dreams surprise Someone will often say something
Speaker 1: to you in a dream and you'll think, Wow, that
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like something I would have thought of, But
Speaker 1: it was your brain that came up with it. Now,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, this can result from random hurricanes
Speaker 1: of activity in the depths of your unconscious brain, all
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you don't have access to awareness of,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't necessarily have to be meaningful, like a
Speaker 1: deep hidden message. But again, the part that weirds me
Speaker 1: out is that your brain can serve up this very
Speaker 1: weird stuff to you and it is totally believed by you,
Speaker 1: which should make us appropriately suspicious of all the things
Speaker 1: that we believe in waking life. As you know from
Speaker 1: this episode In the last I don't think that dreams
Speaker 1: necessarily have meaning, but they may provide an interesting tool
Speaker 1: to explore the boundaries of our own consciousness. If we
Speaker 1: agree that the mind is the final frontier, dreams may
Speaker 1: be one way that we can navigate its depth. Until
Speaker 1: next time, keep dreaming and I'll see you in the
Speaker 1: next episode. I'll link lots of papers about lucid dreaming
Speaker 1: at eagleman dot com slash podcasts, so don't forget to
Speaker 1: go there, and I'd love to hear about your experiences
Speaker 1: or your questions about lucid dreaming. So send me a
Speaker 1: note at podcast at eagleman dot com to let me
Speaker 1: know your thoughts. If you enjoy these episodes, please consider
Speaker 1: leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform, and check
Speaker 1: out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos
Speaker 1: of each episode and to leave comments until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm David Eagleman and this is Inner Cosmos.