Two things I've been wondering...

[Mes Tarrant]

1. Has there been any research done to figure out why some people are natural lucid dreamers? 2. We always say that when you WILD, your body falls asleep but your mind stays awake. If it were literally that, we'd be completely awake but just not be able to move our body.. so even though we say our mind is awake, part of our brain has to have fallen asleep for us to see dreams. Which part of the brain is this? Thanks!

[Bonsay]

Well yeah, the mind doesn't stay awake, that's just a figure of speech, the minds stays aware while the body is asleep. I took a look at wiki, and there is a "neurobiological model" of what happens when one is lucid. Apparently the awareness might come from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex part of the brain.

[Moonbeam]

2. We always say that when you WILD, your body falls asleep but your mind stays awake. If it were literally that, we'd be completely awake but just not be able to move our body.. so even though we say our mind is awake, part of our brain has to have fallen asleep for us to see dreams. Which part of the brain is this? Yes this is something I have wondered about too. It never made sense to me to say that your body but not your mind was asleep, because your body doesn't really sleep, right, it's just paralyzed so that your brain can sleep without your body moving. So some part of your mind is what is doing the sleeping. Maybe somebody can explain it.

[Oneironaught]

It's not so much that the mind stays "awake". What happens is that you're able to hold on to a thread of consciousness while passing into a state of sleep. So your brain still falls sleep but part of your awareness is made to remain intact. If not continually, then in queue so that lucidity is only an arms reach away. As for the body "going to sleep", it's put into the same condition that it would if you were in a normal state of sleep. Voluntary muscle activity is put into quiescence.