Who or what should we blame for the lack of lucidity ?

^^ I must agree with Louai, here, Steph; I'm pretty sure LaBerge got that bit about missing LD's for lack of dream recall wrong.

Since LD's are waking-consciousness events, they are stored in memory just like any other waking-life events. Also, given that most LD's (especially the "surprise" ones) are extremely memorable events, I believe that they are events that would not only be easily remembered (as in straight into long-term memory), but they would be very hard to forget.

Dream recall is of course very important on its own, because it does things like train your mind to pay attention to your dreams, allow you a chance to look for repeating dreamsigns, and give you a foundation for expectation/intention (i.e., recalling dream places to which you'd like to return). So dream recall matters, but I really do not think that we are all forgetting LD's on a regular basis.

I'm not sure why LaBerge drew this conclusion, or whether he still believes it, but forgetting LD's simply does not agree with the nature of a LD as the waking-consciousness event that LaBerge himself has defined. A strange contradiction on his part, I think.

This, therefore, might not be the real solution. Dream recall is a very good thing, but not for the sake of remembering LD's that you might have otherwise forgotten.

Yes. But still, could it be the benefits of dream recall that make children LD more? I mean they do have more dream recall, and therefore do practice expectation/intention due to their interest to it, like "wow! That dream was fun! I wanna have it again!" or something like that. So, dream recall + their curious fun attitude causing expectatiOn/intention, or something like that.
Could be that simple! Could, but this is only an option, and may not be the only one(probably isn't, maybe)

^^ Sure. As I already said, good dream recall is a very good thing, and doing things like keeping a dream journal is very important to LDing, mostly for the reasons you already said. I was not belittling dream recall -- though it is certainly not the only answer to successful LD'ing.

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That was, what was directly linked to LDs declining in that study about LDing children - recall declining.

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I thought the study said "moderately correlated" not directly linked :P
I don't have the article with me (just found it, Recalling and Forgetting Dreams: Theta and Alpha
Oscillations during Sleep Predict Subsequent Dream Recall), but there's some study that suggests you can predict dictate dream recall even before you wake up. Also, your "neuro-soup" may be also influencing your lack of recall when you wake up (at large to a large extent of your dreams), and if assuming you get lucid - thus, altering brain activity to better resemble waking life - your recall would improve.

An article that might be relevant to this: Does the Circadian Modulation of Dream Recall Modify with Age?

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Measurements and Results:

Dream recall and number of dreams varied significantly across the circadian cycle and between age groups, with older subjects exhibiting fewer dreams (P < 0.05), particularly after naps scheduled during the biological day, closely associated with the circadian rhythm of REM sleep. No significant age differences were observed for the emotional domain of dream content.

Conclusions:

Since aging was associated with attenuated amplitude in the circadian modulation of REM sleep, our data suggest that the age-related decrease in dream recall can result from an attenuated circadian modulation of REM sleep.

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PS: a downside of this study is the sample: doesn't include children/teenagers.

I wouldn't dismiss dream recall so quickly. I think it would be great if we could conduct a miniresearch and see the results. It doesn't hurt at least.

A bunch of probably silly and ignorant questions, but somehow important to understand dream recall implications:
- can dream recall become exceptionally good without lucidity ?
- why do we remember lucids better that nlds?
- can we get better at lucidity by remembering better how dreams are and feel ? Yeesss !
- why do we forget dreams so fast ? Is it possible to keep recall of every dream we have recalled ?

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- can dream recall become exceptionally good without lucidity ?

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Yes, there's loads of reports of great dream recallers that make no mention of lucidity.

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- why do we remember lucids better that nlds?

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You're more conscious, which allows a better encoding/storage of memories?

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- can we get better at lucidity by remembering better how dreams are and feel ? Yeesss !

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Like a Pavlovian response? Pretty sure we can, that's why we use dream signs :P

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- why do we forget dreams so fast ? Is it possible to keep recall of every dream we have recalled ?

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"Neuro-soup" during sleep seems that it doesn't facilitate sub-subsequent recall, along with other aspects mentioned in that study in my last post.

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Originally Posted by Zoth

Yes, there's loads of reports of great dream recallers that make no mention of lucidity.



You're more conscious, which allows a better encoding/storage of memories?



Like a Pavlovian response? Pretty sure we can, that's why we use dream signs :P

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"Neuro-soup" during sleep seems that it doesn't facilitate sub-subsequent recall, along with other aspects mentioned in that study in my last post.

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I agree with that until someone proves it wrong. But for the question about dream feeling, you can use self-awareness for that, but not really a dream feeling more than realizing you are dreaming cuz of the self-awareness

I'm pretty sure no one is dismissing dream recall here, VagalTone. Here's my take on your questions, for what it's worth:

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Originally Posted by VagalTone

- can dream recall become exceptionally good without lucidity ?

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Yes.

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- why do we remember lucids better that nlds?

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Because lucid dreams are waking-consciousness events, and waking consciousness events -- especially the important ones -- tend to be more carefully filed in memory than non-waking consciousness events (aka: NLD's).

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- can we get better at lucidity by remembering better how dreams are and feel ?

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Of course.

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- why do we forget dreams so fast ?

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Because NLD's are generally not stored in memory at all. I have no idea about the physiological specifics of this (I'll bet Zoth does, though), but it is probably because the images of regular dreams are simply not significant enough to be considered memorable by the brain's operating system.

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Is it possible to keep recall of every dream we have recalled ?

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Sure. It's called a dream journal. It seems that the very act of writing a dream down is instrumental in raising its significance to "rate" long-term memory storage. So, if you recall a dream and write it down, it could possibly be with you forever.

Also true what Sageous said, and Zoth(but does my opinion matter!? They taught me everything I know about LDing! Of course I won't have a different opinion^^)

(We should make a thread to store dreaming articles so they don't get lost between all the pages, and that everyone could access them and use them in the discussions)

Two more studies regarding dream recall, one shows that dream recall is lower in younger groups. Note: it's cross-sectional, not longitudinal, so don't take it too seriously.
Home Dream Recall in Children and Young Adults

And another one regarding dream socialization (very interesting imo) and it's effect on subsequent dream recall:
The effects of dream socialization in childhood on dream recall frequency and the attitude towards dreams in adulthood: A retrospective study

The last one is particularly relevant to discuss why some people could have a worse dream recall than others.

Yeah, we should make a thread, or better yet, ask the admins to add a new section for studies regarding defferent aspects of LDing(may not happen, but at least we can try)

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Originally Posted by Sageous

I'm pretty sure no one is dismissing dream recall here, VagalTone. Here's my take on your questions, for what it's worth:

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I know you were not dismissing dream recall. I meant to say that you don´t consider it as the real solution.

As you said in your post:

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This, therefore, might not be the real solution

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In the next post ( which sadly i noticed only after posting my reply )

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I was not belittling dream recall -- though it is certainly not the only answer to successful LD'ing.

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Ok, so you agree it is an answer to succesfull LD'ing ! Not the real solution, but likely one real solution !

And thank you Sageous, and also Zoth, for replying my questions. I am still curious about more deep mechanisms :P ( even if they don´t exist )


Another question :D : Is it too much if i propose that we don´t lucid dream more often because we don´t know, or remember, how a dream feels like ?

I have a longer post in the pipeline - and still didn't read back - but I just wanted to make one thing clear.
When I say recall - what I really mean as well, is getting an intimacy with one`s dreams - getting to know the feeling of one`s dreams - seeing patterns, not just reconstruct story-lines.

Which is much deeper an issue than the term "recall" maybe suggests.

But I also can't really imagine to have been fully lucid and not noted it in a more special way than waking life.
Just waking life is easy to forget - but LD is something extraordinary in my intuition - but who knows - really remembering nothing could really hide even amazing things? Hm..

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Originally Posted by Zoth

I thought the study said "moderately correlated" not directly linked :P

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And - took a look at the children-paper to check, if I have twisted things in my memory :D

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Frequency of dream recall

Most children and young adults remember their dreams at
least sometimes (84%), only 5% reported no dream recall at
Table 4 Inferential statistics on dream-related variables

Univariate anova (Table 4) using Sex and
Secondary School Type as fixed factors and Age as
covariate showed a significant effect for Sex but not for any
other variable. Girls in our sample had slightly but signifi-
cantly higher recall of their dreams (girls: mean = 2.42,
SE = 0.05; boys: mean = 2.24, SE = 0.06).

As expected, dream recall was significantly correlated with frequent lucid
dreaming (r = 0.14, df = 694, P < 0.01), lifetime prevalence
of lucid dreaming (r = 0.10, df = 694, P < 0.01) and recent
lucidity (r = 0.13, df = 694, P < 0.01). There was no evidence
of a relationship between dream recall and control over
dream plot, however (r = 0.06, df = 694, NS).

Similar to a recent study by Schredl and Erlacher (2011),
but to a lesser degree, frequency of dream recall was
significantly correlated with frequency of lucid dreams,
suggesting that the ability to remember one?s dreams
facilitates lucid dreaming or the memory of it.

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Good dream-recall is significantly correlated with life-time LD prevalence, LD frequency and recent lucidity - don't think, I got this wrong - or do the numbers paint a different picture than the text in your view? Honest question - too lazy to try to answer it to myself and run into - obstacles.

"Is it too much if i propose that we don´t lucid dream more often because we
don´t know, or remember, how a dream feels like ?"

It is not the only factor. Note that a fream feeling is based on self-awareness. There is no special dream feeling, just the effect of self-awareness. That said, you still can have plenty of LDs using expectation/intention and dream signs.

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Is it too much if i propose that we don´t lucid dream more often because we don´t know, or remember, how a dream feels like ?

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Depends on what you mean with "dream feeling". You talked with a certain person who mentioned this in one of her interviews exactly that, so maybe she told you something else that can clarify what she said?

First of all, we need to realize consciousness is not an unitary result. You can only experience consciousness as one whole....experience, but in fact that experience is being constructed by many many systems present in your brain. So this dreamy feeling would actually have to derive from one (or more) of those systems. I think the "dreamy feeling" is actual the consciousness that you are dreaming, or more precisely, a "construct" of those systems active in the brain during a dream, it's realization if you may.

If we assume the dream itself may possess intrinsic characteristics that distinguish it from waking life experience, then the "dreamy feeling" would be the representation of certain cerebral components working, right? Just like you can make a rat walk near a cat without any trace of fear if you interfere with his amygdala, you would encounter certain brain regions with low activity during REM, and then an significant increase of activity when lucidity occurs (and we get exactly that during that study that shows the neurocorrelates of lucid dreaming).
Now, some of the intrinsic characteristics of a dream that make it differ from waking life are: lack of logic and coherency, lack of continuity, disruption of laws of physics, abnormal behavior, etc. But they all require cerebral components that are impaired during sleep/REM/dreams. So saying we don't get lucid is because we don't remember or know how a dream feels like would be redundant: we know how a dream feels like, we just can't remember it when the mechanisms that allow us to do that are impaired.

People like Sageous who are constantly (even if not always at a high-level) experiencing the "dreamy feeling", do it because (guessing time), they have increased activity in those self-monitoring throughout the whole dream, resultant of continuous shift to that state of introspection (which also characterizes certain types of meditation and mindfulness, although this in particular can be discussed to some extent) that effectively ends up rewiring their brain.

@Steph

Now I'm a bit confused. Your view on it is correct, p < 0.01 indicates a strong correlation, you're seeing it right. It's just that in the same page, they say: "Dream lucidity is moderately related to dream recall, but unrelated to duration of sleep or napping." So does the correlation get weaker as they age? Now that's weird!

But that awareness (surely self awareness) has to transit to the dream. It is a state of mind, or what? It'll be very helpful to label what self awareness is(habit/state of mind/...) so we can know if it is impaired during dreams, but that would be hard, since it envolves a lot of brain activities that aren't very well studied, or even specified what they are exactly that produce self awareness.

In the end you can only blame yourself....

Or something like that.... ;)