The veil that separates reality from dreams may be thinner than what we first thought. In a study, researchers in four countries claim that they've shown the possibility of communicating with people who are lucid dreaming.
During some times, dreamers have been reported to be able to respond to yes-or-no questions and simple math problems via facial and eye movements; some participants recall hearing the questions while they dreamt.
The Science of Dreaming
In the study published on February 18 in the journal Current Biology, researchers were able to have real-time dialogue with dreamers during REM sleep.
Cognitive neuroscientists and author of the study Ken Paller and his colleagues at Northwestern University, Chicago have studied the connections between memory and sleeping for years.
It is a well-known fact that sleep is critical to the robust storage of memories we create throughout the day. However, there is are still many unanswered questions about the process and how dreams play a role in the conversion of memories to long-term.
Peller tells Gizmodo, "We are investigating dreaming to learn more about why dreams happen and how they might be useful for mental functions during waking." Paller notes that their previous studies hypothesize that sleep cognition can benefit memory functions.
People are familiar with one-way communication with those that are sleeping, such as sleep talking and sleepwalking. On the other hand, Paller's team reasons that two-way communication between observers and dreamers should be possible and that dreamers should be able to recall the conversation.
The team theorizes that communication can be induced and replicated giver certain conditions in the lab.
Meanwhile, three other research groups in Germany, Netherlands, and France have been looking into the topic with the same goals.
Conversing With Dreamers
Across 57 sleep sessions of roughly 36 volunteers, the study shows that participants were able to signal that they've entered lucid dreaming via eye movement at 26% of the time. In these sessions, researchers were able to get a minimum of one response to questions through the dreamer's eye movements or facial movements roughly half of the time.
Overall, in the 158 times, observers tried to communicate with lucid dreamers during the sleep sessions. They got correct responses 18% of the time and no response at 60%.
When volunteers were asked, some report remembering the pre-dream instruction received and attempted to carry them out. While some also report hearing observer's question that they've received via a dream.
Despite that impeccable findings, they are based on small sample sizes, and conclusions should be drawn with caution. Still, Paller says that the study has established that two-way communication with lucid dreamers is possible.
With different research groups using varying methods, they were all able to indicate the same activity which means it is not an isolated phenomenon.
The team has coined the term "interactive dreaming" for the phenomenon.
Researchers plan to continue the study and improving people's ability to enter the uncommon dream state.
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