Thread: Lucid dreaming, meditation, Neuroscience

There is a good deal of discussion about Lucid dreaming and meditation, I just wanted to consolidate a few pieces a information on the subject I have come across. I have talked about the overlap between meditation and lucid dreaming before, in particular that meditation strengthens and complexifies neural regions responsible for lucid dreaming. I think this is especially important in reference to people who are interested in the potential for development in these areas, to open access to new levels and types of experience.

Doing some general searches I have found several interesting articles. The first being on sciencealert.com. This states that "what they found was that participants who were highly lucid during dreams had larger anterior prefrontal cortexes, which is the region of the brain that controls conscious cognitive processes and plays an important role in our ability to self reflect."

It has been known for some time that meditation activates this region and others associated with meta-cognition. And over a period of time the presence of these states cause physical changes in the brain, the reoccurring presence of the meditative state eventually will cause long term structural changes, causing a up grading effect, allowing for great efficiency in its functions. I have thought of it in computer terms, I consider the brain a self-evolving computer, when one first downloads new software like the meditative or LD state, it does not run anywhere as well as it could, but if you keep playing the program over and over, if the brain thinks it is important, it will renovate the structures responsible for it, to better uphold the program. What once in the beginning was a novel state pattern becomes over a period of time a inherent, habitual, automatic, and ingrained characteristic of the brain-mind synergy.

The second article is from wikipedia it says "Recent studies have shown heightened activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, frontal cortex, and prefrontal cortex, specifically in the dorsal medial prefrontal area during Vipassana meditation." This has built on what I said above and validated what people have known or suspected for a long time, especially most schools of meditation, a connection has been known in Buddhism between the two states for nearly 2000 years, the earliest records emerging from somewhere around what is now modern day Iraq.

This next article is from mindful.org
"Increased Grey Matter/Cortical Thickness in the following key areas:

• Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Increased grey matter changes were noted in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is a structure located behind the brain’s frontal lobe. It has been associated with such functions as self-regulatory processes, including the ability to monitor attention conflicts, and allow for more cognitive flexibility.

• Prefrontal Cortex: Increased grey matter density was also found in areas of the prefrontal lobe, which are primarily responsible for executive functioning such as planning, problem solving, and emotion regulation.

• Hippocampus: Increased cortical thickness in the hippocampus has also been noted. The hippocampus is the part of the limbic system that governs learning and memory, and is extraordinarily susceptible to stress and stress-related disorders like depression or PTSD."

This just restated what I said above about long term structural changes, but I felt I should put this in to round out my theory with more sources. This article is from newsroom.ucla.edu/ . One more thing I thought I would mention, that meditation has been found to produce.

"Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification (“folding” of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate."

“The insula has been suggested to function as a hub for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration,” said Luders. “Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula.”

In conclusion, the meditative and lucid dream state heavily overlap and influence each other. They are associated with and use many of the same brain systems, they share common ground. I have come to call them 'synthesis states', what this means is that they are mutually beneficial, they share common points of activity, when one develops via neural complexification so does the other as a result of their shared foundations. The stronger these higher meta cognitive or frontal regions become through meditation or otherwise, the more easily accessible their functions become, like self awareness, self regulation, memory access. One can thus more easily connect to these functions while dreaming, or at any time. There has been some confusion on these points in the past so I thought I would add my conclusions into the mix to facilitate better understanding for those who are interested or confused about the relation between these two interesting states and how they may overlap.

Thank you for your attention, if anyone has anything to add, article or theory, I would enjoy your perspective.