Quick Review of the Scientific Litterature on Lucid Dreaming 2021

[Occipitalred]

After recent conversations, I have decided to peruse the accessible scientific literature on dreaming and lucid dreaming to better align my understanding of the topic with the modern scientific discussion. This post is not meant to be a comprehensive review. I only read the articles discussed here and a few more, that is, I can’t say how aligned these articles are with the wider scientific dream discussion but they did seem to be coherent together. I also did not think critically about the methodology of experiments and the weaknesses of conclusions. I gave a lot of trust to the authors just so I could get a quick glimpse. So, let’s take this with a grain of salt. Finally, I’m only going to comment on aspects of these articles that seem relevant to discussions that I have participated in or read here on Dreamviews. For brevity, I did some copy paste here and there in my summaries. I encourage you to read these articles yourself. What do you think? Also, if you have any articles you want to share, I’m very interested! (Article, Kahan and Laberge 2011): https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...a%3Dihub#b0040 (Review by Horton: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7379370/) Here, Laberge’s team conclude that waking and dreaming processing cognition is similar as reported by the subjects. I can’t access the article but the review by Horton discusses Laberge’s paper: It claims that cognition and metacognition were significantly similar in dream and waking with some difference, the main one being we don’t recognize our experience as being internally generated while asleep. They claim metacognition can be roused and the sleeper can recognize their experience as externally generated. Interestingly, this review article also makes anti-lucidity or anti-dream control conclusions perhaps interesting to discuss. Kahn 2019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...g-10-02676.pdf Says that there is continuity between the dream and waking self’s emotional response to events, people and behaviours. The non-continuity is in the events and behaviours (and acceptance of these implausible events/behaviours). Emotional reaction is the same but not the reaction (because you’d recognize the scenario doesn’t make sense). (Hobson 2009) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art....32.9.1191.pdf Hobson et al. demonstrate that lucid dream has a different brain state from REM sleep. The lucid dreaming brain state is similar to the waking state. Non-lucid REM sleep is different from lucid REM sleep and both are different from waking but lucidity leads to a voluntary change of brain state toward a waking state. (Tononi 2010) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814941/ An interesting review worth reading but I just wanted to point out some parts: Dreaming consciousness is like waking consciousness except reduced attention and voluntary control, lack in self-awareness, altered reflective thought, occasional hyperemotionality, and impaired memory. - What determines the level of consciousness during sleep? Perhaps it’s better measured by brain response to transcranial magnetic stimulation than EEG, which may be associated with brain’s ability to integrate information. - Are dreams more like perception or imagination? More like imagination than perception. (Gravely and Wamsley) https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/fe...ps-0000018.pdf Whereas historical models (Messages from gods, Freudian model, activation-synthesis model, AIM model) of dreaming emphasized how much of a different state of consciousness dreaming was, recent research demonstrates that dreaming is more like waking consciousness. Dreaming is not a replay of previous experiences. Like in waking daydreaming, distant and recent memory fragments combine to form novel imaginary scenarios never lived before. For example, the spontaneous (rather than random) neural activity is also characteristic of waking consciousness. In fact, they argue that there is no compelling evidence that dreams can be usefully “interpreted” in clinical practice. That is, dreams are not more symbolic than waking cognition. Instead, dreaming is best viewed as a transparent reflection of waking thoughts, feelings, and memories. They also argue that dreams do not cause memory consolidation but that rather, they reflect at the phenomenological level, memory consolidation at the neurobiological level. (Tononi 2018) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-36190-w.pdf Their results suggest that frequent lucid dreaming is associated with increased functional connectivity between the anterior prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal association areas (while awake), regions normally deactivated during sleep. Interestingly, no significant differences between groups were observed for brain structure, working memory capacity, or questionnaire assessments of mind-wandering frequency, prospective or retrospective memory or trait mindfulness. They characterize lucid dreams with self-reflection and metacognitive awareness of one own’s state of consciousness. They note that evidence indicates that lucid dreaming is a learnable skill that can be developed by training in strategies such as metacognitive monitoring (i.e., “reality testing”) and, especially, prospective memory. Because they saw no significant difference in working memory capacity, and prospective and retrospective memory, they posit that differences in memory skills might not affect frequency of spontaneous lucid dreams, but might be useful in learning to lucid dream. Interestingly, about trait mindfulness, seems like it does not affect spontaneous lucidity either. And this seems to correspond with other studies. Except meditation. Meditation might be a good strategy but it wasn’t studied here. The type of mindfulness they looked at was decentering and curiosity. The Curiosity factor corresponds to an “an attitude of wanting to learn more about one’s experiences”, whereas the Decentering factor corresponds to “awareness of one’s experience with some distance and dis-identification rather than being carried away by one’s thoughts and feelings” (Baird 2020) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...ms-1525230.pdf There might be two neurobiological signatures of lucid dreaming. 1. The lucid moment switch “ah, I am dreaming”: metacognition signature and 2. potential sustained differences in brain activity between lucid and non-lucid REM sleep dreaming. This second neural signature is unlikely to be a signature of meta-awareness per se, as during lucid dreams individuals do not continuously engage in metacognitive reflection on their state of consciousness. Rather, this second signature captures the “state-shift” in consciousness that occurs from non-lucid to lucid dreaming, with enhanced volition, episodic memory and accessibility of metacognition. They also state that all dreams are not the same and there are so many variables between individual dreams. Training to lucid dream: prospective memory, interrupting sleep with short periods of wakefulness. Some define a state of pre-lucid which I think is relevant: when you question things in the dream without concluding you are dreaming, or doing impossible things. Overall, these data suggest that the pattern of brain activation observed during dreamed motor execution overlaps with motor execution during wakefulness. However, given the different patterns of activation, the data may also suggest that the interactions between the supplementary motor area, somatosensory and sensorimotor cortex differs between REM sleep dreaming and waking. The authors suggest that the reduced activation in sensorimotor cortex could be due in part to the lack of sensory feedback as a result of REM sleep atonia. Some eye movement studies show that dreaming is more like waking perception than imagination in that aspect. (Robert 2012) https://idea.library.drexel.edu/isla...ct/idea%3A3853 While waking mindfulness is related to dream mindfulness, it is not correlated with lucidity. Alternatively, while high levels of attention, reflection, volition, self-awareness, and control are often observed in lucid dreams, they may not be exclusive to lucid dreams. (Tononi 2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...ms-1024341.pdf Long term meditation is associated with more frequent lucid dreams, and only among meditators is there an associate between lucid dream frequency and mindful waking traits: observing, non-distraction, non-automaticity and decentering (observing thoughts and mental events as mental events, opacity of mental states). Quick Conclusion I would like to direct intention toward three things: The continuity hypothesis (dream cognition is continuous with waking cognition), the mindfulness-lucid gap : waking mindfulness is continuous with dream mindfulness but neither were associated with lucid frequency in non practitioners (to me this means, that while mindfulness might help a lucid dream practioner get lucids, one does not naturally cause the other. This also why we often talk about semi-lucids, because we can have a lucid dream (metacognitive event) during a low mindfulness dream period and vice versa. In the Hobson study with lucid practioners, the authors posit two biological signatures of lucid dreaming, one associated with the aha moment and one associated with the brain state being more alike waking (mindfulness perhaps). So, the mindfulness-lucidity gap that there are two general component to "lucid dreams", Recognition of External/Internal generated items when impaired, is the critical trait of non-lucid dreaming. I'm really interested in any discussion that might sprout from these articles and from others, but I wanted to emphasize these to support another thread I want to make and I will link here once it is posted: In-Out Tagging

[Sageous]

I had only one immediate thought about this, Occipitalred: https://youtu.be/7CAdUFNNlqY Just kidding! Seriously, though, thanks for sharing; that's the sort of stuff this forum needs!

[Lang]

Thank you, for sharing!

[Tiktaalik]

Thanks for putting this together! Coincidentally, I was also sifting through the internet recently looking for articles like these so I can’t wait to get stuck into some of the articles.

[Lang]

Btw. I'm pinning it.

[DarkestDarkness]

I think I will give my thoughts on these articles one at a time as I read them, because the thoughts on each will likely be long. Any critique is welcome on my thoughts, too. Horton's review is interesting and I appreciate the fact that it allows me to learn and think about what's being done in research. I feel I want to put under question or disagree with some elements of the review, under the consideration that the two main problems with me doing so are: a) any statement from a non-scholarly individual like myself is likely considered anecdotal at best and b) I am a layman with bias. The hypothesis that there is continuity to thought and mental processes, defined as "mental content" or "mentation" makes sense to me. From my experience, how focused I am or how memorable something is, varies from moment to moment not only while dreaming but also while awake and my experience with "daydreaming" or "visualisation" suggests that even while fully conscious and waking, in a state of trance, a lot of detail will be gone in terms of recall even if I try to make mental note of that detail. In that sense, I think all experience, dreamt or waking, shares an aspect of selecting and discarding or consolidating information, be it internal or external. Despite some grammatical errors, the review is coherent and the arguments for its conclusions seem sound... At first my thoughts on this were "it's acceptable enough", given that English isn't my native language, but on discussing the review with my partner, he argued that the grammar should be precise, because this is a paper of scientific relevance and because in principle, matters of supposed scientific merit should be as specific and coherent as possible (while remaining concise). In his argument, he thought that poor grammar indicated that neither Horton, nor the reviewer of Horton's article, had sufficiently proof-read the article, which I am inclined to agree with. I presume that the conclusions drawn by the author are based on the evidence that was available to her, in the referenced content, but I feel as though some bias can be read into it. I was disappointed to find that although the importance of regular non-lucid sleep is highlighted, the author made no mention of sleep quality other than the possibility that lucid dreaming may interfere with regular sleep and its presumed functions; perhaps there isn't enough, or any, research on that, but maybe there should (could) be. I'd like to highlight the fact that, despite any grammar issues, I believe the author makes some decent and appropriate distinctions and definitions between/around awareness and control, because people do seemingly come into or discuss lucid dreaming thinking more about control than about awareness. When I have discussed the topic with those not practised in lucid dreaming, they often misunderstand and assume that I am discussing dream control (as a result of awareness) with them, so my personal suspicion is that people may have secret obsessions about control that they are either not consciously aware of, or that they do not divulge to others. I often try to highlight to others the potential value of not having absolute control over one's dreams. And on control, one point I disagree with is the claim that control is (necessarily) an artificial experience, although I feel this aspect of artificiality is not well defined; because of this feeling of being inadequately defined, I would argue that control can be a natural experience. I am not arguing that control is always a natural experience, just that it's possible for it to be natural, too. Consider for instance that human beings, collectively, end up seeking and having control not only over other members of the species but also over the environment, even at small scales, with a seemingly natural goal of increasing the sense of safety and security. I am not arguing on whether that is morally/ethically correct or not, since that can depend on specifics. I think that we can feel, at a non-conscious level, a certain drive to improve our conditions so that we can survive in a "better" way. I think the threshold for whether control is natural or artificial relates to our "instinct" and drive for certain things, because a drive to do something relating to control, in dreaming or waking, can rise up, initially, from non-conscious feelings or intuition. Regardless, my main objection to this claim about dream control, is that it can and does seem to happen even during regular "non-lucid" dreaming, how often and how much, seems to vary from person to person. My own dream control even when non-lucid has increased over the years and while we might think this might have to do with my interest in lucid dreaming, based on discussions I've had about lucidity and control with others both practised and not practised, I am made to think more of a pre-determined trait for natural dream control in the same way that natural lucidity seems to be more pre-determined for some people than others; likewise, some people seem to have more drive and ability to control situations in their life, versus others. In addition, during lucid dreaming, non-conscious content can continue to arise even when there are willing attempts to suppress it. My thoughts on this are that this follows the "mentation" logic mentioned, because while awake we can also suppress unwanted non-conscious thoughts, imagery and feelings to a certain degree, though if we do, those suppressions may just reinforce the content to reappear, maybe even more often. Although arguably dreaming awareness may have a knock-on effect regarding what kind of content will continue to arise while dreaming, whether one chooses to suppress "involuntary" content or not is up to the dreamer and so I see natural processes as seemingly continuing to occur even when we cross the threshold required for "lucidity", in the typical sense. So personally, I cannot understand the claim that control of dream content is necessarily unnatural; at least, there seems to be no consideration on both sides of this matter from the author, which is why I think there may be some bias (or lack of supporting evidence to consider the other side) involved. Like many other "actions" we can take, is it not possible that control is as much choice as it is partly an impulse? If one has a non-conscious impulse to control something, it takes conscious self-control to stop that non-conscious intent, which part of this situation should be considered unnatural? However, moving away from that, I do generally agree with the cautions urged around focusing on dream control and the points made under the final "Discussion" heading. I do not personally believe that dream control is always beneficial when it comes to exploring one's dreams and other non-conscious imagery, partly for the reasons I mentioned above regarding suppression of non-conscious mental content. I also believe that the author is trying to promote future investigations around dreaming to not have as much emphasis being placed on control, which I think is a valuable thing to promote.

[IndigoRose]

I've managed to read two of them so far (+1 related). I will also comment on them in separate posts. Horton C. L. (2020). Key concepts in dream research: cognition and Consciousness are inherently linked, but do no not control "control"! I am going to be critical here. I think this review has many signs of bad science. I find the first half interesting and ok as a review but I think the second half is very speculative and not based on a good knowledge of LDing. Here are my comments on the specific parts. Furthermore, in some studies of LD, participants who achieve lucidity may continue to develop the ability to control their actions during dreaming (LaBerge, 1980). Indeed, several studies aimed to achieve this, rather than studying the mere presence of lucidity in more naturalistic or opportunistic settings. Such studies confuse the concepts of lucidity and control, with the former being more likely to occur naturally, and the latter being rare and artificial experiences. As such scholars should be cautious about inferring the nature of consciousness and/or cognition from artificial control-induction techniques, as this likely differs from the profile of mental content emerging from experiences of lucidity. I agree that lucidity and control are often mixed. There is certainly some attraction to the idea of controlling our dreams. I find it interesting that she differentiates between a naturally occurring lucidity (no control) and artificially induced lucidity (with control). This is obviously a false dichotomy because natural lucid dreamers or people with rare natural lucid dreams often control their dreams and artificially induced lucidity can be without control. Also, given that I see lucidity as a result of mindset and the will to be lucid (rather than as a result of an induction technique), I have to refuse this binary view of natural vs not natural/induced/artificial. On the other hand, I agree that completely natural lucidity is understudied. One reason for this is the difficulty - even such a simple thing as eye signalling is an act of control and is very artificial - so it could be only studied based on the recall. However, often the heightened metacognitive awareness is rousing and awakens the dreamer. ... The underlying cognition, or hypothetical function, reflects accurate reality monitoring, metacognition, self-awareness and, typically, arousal (from enjoyment of the experience). ... Furthermore, inducing lucidity interrupts sleep, which we know is required to facilitate emotion-regulation and memory consolidation processes... More bits showing that she sees lucidity as something unnatural and inherently rousing or interrupting sleep. It can be like that but doesn't need to be. There are many inducing techniques or routines that are in no way disrupting sleep (from daytime mindset-building techniques to WILDs during a bonus sleep like naps). I'll get to the "dangers of LDing" later. Now to the control. Surely the most controversial part of the paper. She defines control as: We should then define control carefully for instance as voluntarily changing experience. Everything we do in lucid dreams (assuming we are lucid enough) fits this description. This is something she obviously doesn't realize. But it is not possible to be significantly aware and completely give up control. Our conscious attention changes the dream. Looking at something or thinking about something changes the dream. Turning away from whatever was happening and going to explore changes the dream. Caution should be urged when considering whether it may be appropriate to recommend that participants control their dreams, given that doing so increases sleep disturbances via awakenings... Wrong or at least not supported by data, I think. and also that controlling dream content is unnatural, therefore it may restrict the activation of memory sources and emotions that may underly sleep-dependent memory consolidation (Wamsley and Stickgold, 2011) and emotion regulation (Walker, 2009) processes. This is pure speculation. As far as I know, there is no proven link between dream content and memory consolidation. If I am mistaken, please correct me. I haven't reviewed the cited papers, so that's maybe something to do. She also cited her own work earlier on associations, memory activation and consolidation - also something to possibly read. But given the wording ("it may"), I think she also knows it is all just theories or subjects for future studies. Personally, I don't believe that the link would be so direct (like I am supposed to dream about an apple today and if I dream about an orange instead, some important process in my brain doesn't happen). Perhaps only in the case of nightmares ... should the possible benefits of reducing distress from terrifying dreams outweigh the likely negative consequences of changing sleep structure and physiology, by restricting the opportunity for “offline” processing ... LD is concerning for a number of reasons, as recently outlined by Vallat and Ruby (2019), whereby training to overcome the mental content spontaneously emerging during sleep-dependent cognition ultimately changes and thwarts those processes. Humans likely need to foster the conditions for those processes to occur in order to benefit from the plethora of advantages of sleep. Again the same thing plus again mentioning the sleep disruption as a needed part of the induction. I think there is a reason why most of our lucid dreams appear in the morning when we are already rested (all sleep benefits collected) or in naps. Most of my natural lucid dreams happened on weekend mornings when oversleeping. I also try not to make my sleep worse than it already is with my inducing routine - I use natural awakenings and I sleep as long as I feel I need to. I am very sensitive to losing sleep and care a lot about getting good sleep. And I can still LD regularly. It seems surprising that LD has received much attention, when time spent dreaming is far greater. Furthermore, the nature of dreaming and consciousness is fascinating, and may provide insights into the nature and perhaps function of underlying cognitive processes. For instance, dream bizarreness, which typifies REM mentation (Revonsuo and Tarkko, 2002; Payne, 2010) and likely results, at least in part, from hyperassociativity of distinct memory sources during sleep (Horton and Malinowski, 2015) may inform an understanding of the activation, fragmentation and re-organization of memory sources as part of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes (Horton, 2017). Lucidity, however, is highly atypical and therefore arguably cannot offer so much insight. This really sums up her view. I understand that lucidity doesn't offer much to her favourite subjects of study. But I think it offers a lot of insight into the study of consciousness and cognition and I find it fascinating to compare how the brain operates with some parts shut off, or partially accessible or fully accessible. There is a duty to convey that we should not control, control, but instead promote the benefits of sleeping well (Walker, 2019), to afford the opportunity to dream. I strongly disagree with this. Studying the possible adverse effects of LDing is fine and publishing them is good but there is no moral duty in science. I've also read one of the papers she cites a lot and it is about the so much discussed LDing safety, so I am adding it here too. Vallat R., Ruby P. M. (2019). Is it a good idea to cultivate lucid dreaming? Front. Psychol. 10:2585. 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02585 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6874013/ I have some reservations about the previous paper but still, find it interesting. This one, though, is a pure filler. Publishing for publishing. They call it "opinion paper". Go to lucid dreaming subreddit and you'll find the same concerns raised there, by ten year old kids. Sure, they are valid to same extent, but they are nothing new. The concerns are: Disrupting sleep and changing its architecture - the authors argue that popular methods like MILD or WBTB make sleep more fragmented, change its architecture, and decrease its duration. External stimulation - decreasing sleep depth, changing architecture, high risk of awakening. Substances - previous risks + risk of disturbing the balance between the serotonergic and cholinergic systems. Considering the gigantic amount of scientific evidence linking poor-quality or insufficient sleep to adverse health outcomes (including shorter life expectancy), and especially of sleep fragmentation in altered physical and cognitive health ... one may seriously question the health consequences of regularly practicing LD induction methods. OK. My sleep is naturally light and fragmented, so it is hard for me to see this as something horrible, but I am biased. I think these concerns are valid but need to be put into perspective. 1) How often people lucid dream and how big this impact is and 2) the comparison with other socially accepted lifestyle choices or common situations. Other than the extremely common obvious reasons for losing sleep or lower sleep quality (school, work, stress, and generally the western sleep and work culture), I want to mention these: - Alcohol - affects sleep architecture, suppresses REM, affects the balance of the neurotransmitters - Caffeine, nicotine, and other stimulants - lower sleep depth, lower sleep quality - Depression - up to 40% of people now show signs of depression after the pandemic. Depression increases acetylcholine in the brain - more REM, more dreaming, lighter sleep, fragmented sleep - and serotonin levels are also wrong. So if there happens to be any study about the adverse effects, I would love to see some comparisons. Is it more harmful to have a glass of wine or two with my dinner or to have a lucid dream? In the case of a spontaneous increased LD frequency without any use of LD induction methods, one may still wonder what is the impact of “replacing” a regular sleep stage by a hybrid sleep stage on general health and notably on the function of sleep, given the well-known involvement of good sleep in good health and especially of REM sleep in emotional regulation and memory consolidation ... Since there are now evidences that the brain is not functioning in the same way during lucid and non-lucid REM sleep ... one cannot exclude that an increase of lucid REM to the detriment of non-lucid REM may alter or diminish the outcome of regulation processes known to be at play during non-lucid sleep This is basically the same thing as in Horton's review but I think the formulation here is better, it is more carefully written. I would love to see a study done with natural lucid dreamers, ideally with the ones claiming lucidity every day or almost every day. It would be interesting to see if there are any long-term health effects or differences in brain health, mental health, or cognition of frequent natural lucid dreamers and normal populations. And if there are any correlations, the question is what's the cause and what's the effect.

[Occipitalred]

Hey, I’m really excited that you two read the articles and have so much to say! I agree, the grammar is very embarrassing. Just the title itself makes no sense to me so I almost disregarded it but I thought the discussion was intriguing if anything and it gave some information on Laberge’s study… I did find Laberge’s recent work difficult to access. About control, I don’t understand what they mean by an artificial lucid dream? Is it a dream that was induced voluntarily (using Laberge technology like the Novadreamer, or simply using a technique like MILD) or is it a lucid dream in which the dreamer exerts control over the dream?) I agree that the dichotomy seems inappropriate, because using only a Novadreamer without any lucid dreaming understanding, intent or technique such as MILD will not induce lucid dreams. In the case of MILD, Intent is not the most direct form of control either. If we’re talking about control within the dream, well, I feel like I have volition in most my non-lucid dreams, choosing to go such and such way or do such and such action. If it’s about controlling the dream more generally, I still don’t follow because dream control is often related to “directing attention” and making use of “expectations,” none too magical. In some way, it’s impossible not to control your dream (you can’t stop yourself from directing your attention and having expectations, and having those things affect the dream). And you already said that! About the fragmented sleep, before electric light was invented, it was difficult to do much after the sun went down. I’ve heard, but I’m not sure how true this is, that supposedly people often slept in two parts. I think, now with electricity, we can easily fill our days (and nights) much more and find little time to sleep. That’s maybe why we sleep in one part anyway. Fragmenting sleep is probably not so unnatural. Even if I don’t lucid dream, I’m generally woken up by needing to pee or getting water, and I’ll take this natural fragmentation to my advantage. Anyway, the author for sure has an odd view about dreaming. Especially in the context of the “hypothesis of continuity,” I don’t understand why she thinks that there is an absence of volition in non-lucid dreaming. Kind of like mind wandering, there is a lot of spontaneous activity, but there is also a consciousness reacting to the spontaneous cognitive events of mind wandering. If we want to understand more about dreaming, we shouldn’t disregard the conscious system that’s inherently involved in dreaming.

[IndigoRose]

Yeah, the title. I am not sure I understand it. I think she doesn't understand well all the possible induction methods or approaches, I guess she knows MILD, maybe WILD. And also doesn't understand how the control works. She probably doesn't lucid dream or only very rarely. I also can't see how could biphasic sleep (assuming the length is sufficient) cause any problem. Not only it was normal in past, but it is also still common in many countries (main sleep + siesta). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nyr Y., Tononi G. (2010). Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology I really liked this one, certainly worth reading. My favourite part was box 2 - the development of dreams in children. Small children have more REM but they actually dream less. Dreaming with the dreamer being a part of a narrative seems to need the ability to create advanced mental imagery and this only develops around age 5-7. The differences between dreaming consciousness and waking consciousness are nicely compared (already mentioned by Occipitalred). They also realize that there is a large variability: Importantly, individual dreams are highly variable in their phenomenology, and only some conform to the typical monolithic template that is often portrayed. Thus, just like diverse waking experiences, “Not all dreams are created equal”, and future studies should consider different kinds of dreams and their neural correlates separately. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Baird B., Castelnovo A., Gosseries O., Tononi G. (2018). Frequent lucid dreaming associated with increased functional connectivity between frontopolar cortex and temporoparietal association areas A really well-done study, carefully chosen subjects, control group etc. A little bit difficult reading (I don't know much about the structure of the brain) but I would recommend the discussion to everyone - it is nicely readable to laics and offers many interesting thoughts. This part really caught my eyes: The measurement of individual differences in lucid dream frequency has been done in inconsistent ways and could be improved in future research. In the current research, we used a scale with a range of response categories, from “none” to “multiple times per night” (see Supplementary Methods: Dream and lucid dream frequency questionnaire). While this questionnaire provides a straightforward coarse assessment of lucid dream frequency, a limitation of this measure is that it does not measure variation in the length or “degree of awareness” of lucid dreams. Indeed, lucid dreams can range from a realization about the fact that one is dreaming followed by a loss of lucidity shortly thereafter to more extended lucid dreams in which an individual can maintain lucidity for prolonged periods of time. Likewise, lucid dreams can be characterized by varying degrees of clarity of thought. Evaluating the duration of lucid dreams as well as the degree of awareness during lucid dreams will be valuable to relating brain structural and functional measures to lucid dream frequency in future studies. An extended discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of the present article; however, overall these remarks emphasize the need for the development of standardized measures that can be used to assess individual differences in frequency of lucid dreams that simultaneously measure the duration and degree of lucidity during dreams. Can we hope for future research taking into account levels of lucidity? That would be exciting. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regarding the volition in non-lucid dreams, I also believe there can be some. I like the wording "reduced voluntary control and volition" much more than the assumption of no volition in normal dreams. Also for self-awareness - "reduced self-awareness" - and for reflection ("altered reflective thoughts"). I believe these all can appear on a spectrum, leading to all kinds of levels of non-lucidity and semi-lucidity. Only when everything aligns perfectly, we get lucid.

[TechHeadSteve]

So many views, opinions, if only we could all somehow, meet.

[Lang]

If you guys have any more updates, post them here.

[Lucid-Wannabe]

Thanks for putting together this list of studies, going to look them over!