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.
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