Dopamine and Dream Control

I was recently reading a study done by Thomas Yuschak (Pharmacological induction of lucid dreams) and one thing that he said struck me as being quite interesting! He hypothesized that increased dopamine levels could positively influence our dream control - "Dopamine, in particular may play a role in supporting the dreamer’s control over their dreamscape, possibly through increased motivation and confidence levels" (he was referencing an earlier paper he wrote called Advanced Lucid Dreaming - The Power of Supplements).

Now I know, a lot of you guys would probably be like, well, duh doy, anotherdreamer! But this was a really cool realization for me. If it is true, then doing activities such as meditation, exercise, or just improving your diet or gut flora could benefit your daily dopamine levels, your daily experience of joy and motivation in life, and your ability to control your dreams. For me, this could explain why I usually have such fantastic dream control in dreams where I practice loving-kindness meditation or when I practice it before sleeping. I know that you could always take supplements or drugs to boost dopamine levels artificially, but I suspect that doing so would have inevitable and potentially quite negative side effects.

I guess I am wondering now, what other ways have you guys found that help to cultivate a positive mentality and confidence within dreams, naturally? :content:

Acetylcholine is a much better bet to go with, which is why so many people get such powerful results from galantamine (acetylcholinesterase inhibitor--the enzyme that breaks acetylcholine in the brain--and nicotinic acetylcholine agonist) and from nicotine (nicotinic acetylcholine agonist, the namesake of that subtype of receptor). Speaking from personal experience from having been on ADHD meds (been both on amphetamine salts and methylphenidate, both of which increase levels of dopamine and norepinephrine), trying to mess with dopamine levels threatens to ruin dream recall--not to mention your ability to actually fall asleep. Not in the way that you forget your dreams quickly, but in the way that you feel as though you didn't dream at all.

Now, acetylcholine shares a functional link with dopamine, and it's widely known that there seems to be some kind of balancing act between the two. Higher acetylcholine levels usually translates to higher dopamine levels, although in what areas of the brain I'm not entirely sure. Dopamine actually has many functions depending on the area of the brain, and it may be the case that being on stimulants like the ADHD meds I was on has a destructive effect on recall because of just how stimulatory their effects are. Acetylcholine is more closely linked with memory and nootropic (cognitive enhancing) effects while also having the least destructive interference with regards to recall and one's ability to fall asleep, making it a better candidate for targeting.

All that being said, an important thing to note is that when talking about things like dopamine, serotonin, histamine, GABA, and acetylcholine is that ingesting food that has higher levels of these neurotransmitters themselves won't have any appreciable affect on brain levels of them. None of these cross the blood-brain barrier, and nearly all have their own peripheral effects (for instance, serotonin receptors are expressed widely in the gut and eating food with lots of serotonin in it, like bananas, will most likely just give you diarrhea without increasing levels of serotonin in the brain). The brain synthesizes all of those neurotransmitters itself using pre-cursor chemicals that actually can pass through the BBB.

A lot of proteins of the pre-cursor chemicals of neurotransmitters are synthesized in gut flora, so it is more important than it looks, start there. I recommend to search information about enteric nervous sistem and its relationship with microbiota.

Nevertheless emotional stability and do regular sport can be used to administer neurochemical balance, indirectly, it help lucid dreaming.

But I find tha the most important help to cultivate a positive mentality and confidence within dreams is constancy, acquire a habit, record every day in oniric diary. To discover bit by bit the way to broke the little limitations of every night. In this way in the course of time, neuro-chemical balance moves to make easy lucid dreaming, but not like cause, like consequence.

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Originally Posted by anta

A lot of proteins of the pre-cursor chemicals of neurotransmitters are synthesized in gut flora, so it is more important than it looks, start there. I recommend to search information about enteric nervous sistem and its relationship with microbiota.

Nevertheless emotional stability and do regular sport can be used to administer neurochemical balance, indirectly, it help lucid dreaming.

But I find tha the most important help to cultivate a positive mentality and confidence within dreams is constancy, acquire a habit, record every day in oniric diary. To discover bit by bit the way to broke the little limitations of every night. In this way in the course of time, neuro-chemical balance moves to make easy lucid dreaming, but not like cause, like consequence.

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Thank you so much for those suggestions! I really enjoyed reading about the enteric nervous system and the microbiota. The composition of the gut flora and how it changes over time makes me wonder if and how bacterial transplants from a younger, healthy person to an older person could benefit them. I intuitively feel as though, because of the nature of the relationship between the gut and the CNS, maybe gut flora transplants could affect individuals with severe allergies or diseases such as alzheimer's or MS. In any case, I really appreciate you sharing that with me! :)

-I just looked up alzheimer's and gut flora and found an interesting study that had just been published in Nature. I'm not sure if I am allowed to link that here, but it is called "Reduction of Abeta amyloid pathology in APPPS1 transgenic mice in the absence of gut microbiota". Sorry for going so off-topic! :D

Great suggestions with consistency and making a habit of recording dreams everyday as well! I participated in a study a couple years ago that was testing SSILD and it's efficacy for inducing lucid dreams and I found that consistently recording my dreams every day (without SSILD) definitely improved my rate of lucid dream induction as well as my dream control, although it was a bit exhausting. :cheeky: