If you are reading these lines, it may be because the title has caught your attention because this possibility had not been mentioned. Or, on the contrary, you may be part of that percentage of the population that experiences lucid dreaming.
Laura Rio Martinez
PhD in Psychology, researcher and university professor, International University of Valencia
As often happens in matters related to the brain function, Answering the questions we pose is not easy, so let’s go in parts.
What do we know about dreams?
Human beings spend about a third of our lives sleeping. Everything that happens during this time arouses great interest and, probably, dreams are the phenomenon that has aroused the most curiosity throughout history. However, there is still much to be learned in this field.
Today we know that dreams are physiological phenomena that occur mainly during REM sleep stage, and that include emotions, sensations, perceptions and thoughts. Although the content of dreams is very varied, it is generally related to visual experiences, people or objects that we encounter while awake.
What are lucid dreams?
The main characteristic of lucid dreams is that the person is aware of dreaming; You can even control the content of the dream, although this is not always the case.
These types of dream experiences are often triggered by a nightmare in which we feel: “This can not be happening”. They are quite common, since more than half of the adult population has experienced them at least once in their lives, and more than 20% do so with some frequency.
However, it is not clear what the degree of consciousness is during that time interval. Lucid dreams would be understood as an intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness, and people with a tendency to experience them may have greater neural activation in areas that control thoughts. Furthermore, it appears that these individuals have access to the memories they generate while awake.
Finally, the fact that techniques like mindfulness or full attention allow working with this type of dreams, as we will discuss later, it could be pointing to the possibility that some attention control mechanisms are active during the experience.
Is there a way to induce them?
As we have said, some people experience this phenomenon spontaneously, although it is not the most common. It is a skill that can be learned, and the scientific community continues to investigate different methods for it.
cognitive techniquesFor example, they start from the assumption that dream experiences reflect vital experiences, and try to train the ability to generate lucid dreams through aspects such as memory or self-reflection.
Other types of techniques are based on incorporating signals (for example, sounds) during the REM phase, which will end up entering dreams and will be recognized by the person. And some researchers use practices like mindfulness to increase both the ability to control lucid dreams and the frequency of lucid dreams.
We also find experiments based on the intake of substances, and devices have even been developed that would help induce them. However, most of these works do not enjoy a high methodological quality; more research is needed.
How do they affect our health?
Although the general interest in this phenomenon tends to focus on its more recreational aspect, there are studies that point to its possible clinical utility. We cannot forget that this type of experience is common in patients with eating disorder. posttraumatic stressamong others.
First, the presence of lucid dreaming has been linked to a higher degree of well-being, positive emotions, resilience, and increased self-confidence. It has even been suggested that they could serve as a problem-solving strategy.
At a more therapeutic level, specialists have used them to modify the end of nightmares in people who suffer from this problem chronically. On the other hand, the intensity of lucid dreams and the fact that positive emotions appear during them could reduce psychopathological symptoms in people with emotional distress.
On the other hand, other studies suggest that promoting this practice could be detrimental in patients with symptoms of psycho type, since it could contribute to a loss of contact with reality.
Another relevant area of research has to do with the relationship between lucid dreams and the quality of night rest, but the evidence is not firm in this regard. If there is any alteration in this sense, it seems that it would not be of great relevance, since lucid dreams would occupy a small part of the total dream time.
We know that, in general, abnormal experiences that occur while we sleep can be associated with symptoms of emotional distress that would cause an intrusion into sleep. However, it seems that lucid dreams do not generate as much distress as other types of experiences.
By way of conclusion, we can say that not all people live this experience as something pleasant, and that lucid dreams are not positive or negative in themselves: the characteristics of sleep and the way of experiencing them will determine their influence on emotional health. The possibility that they may affect the quality of our sleep is reason enough to approach this issue with caution.