Has anyone ever used MRI to watch the lucid dreaming brain?

[Lady Grimbones]

I had a lucid dream the other night, first one in a long time, and I woke up soon after getting lucid and that seems to be a regular problem with everyone. Since it is a common problem I was thinking that there must be some part of our brain that is normally 'asleep' during dreaming and that is why it is hard for us to get lucid and recall dreams in general. Could there be a way to quiet this part but still remain lucid and why hasn't someone like LaBerge done MRI, or has he?, to know exactly what is going on, or at least as close to as you can, in the brain at this lucid stage? He could make a drug or some sort of magnetic 'hat' thing that would help turn on that part of the brain or simulate a lucid dream experience or whatever. If we could get a 'picture' of the lucid dreaming brain we could recreate that pattern in other brains. They have magnetic 'hats' that they have been using to test Buddhist meditators and such if they knew what areas to turn on or off they could recreate that pattern in anyone's mind even those not technically asleep and you could have lucid dreams at any time. In theory anyway. Just a thought. :-)

[slayer]

Well, I believe scientists have already taken pictures of the brain when someone is LDing. I could be wrong about this of course...

[Lady Grimbones]

If that is so then what did we learn and how can we use it? I guess I'll email Lucidity Institute, maybe no one pays attention to Lding any more in the science world? I dunno. Doesn't seem like LaBerge does much more than hang in Hawaii and act like some sort of guru once a year. Used to be his institute had real paper newsletters you'd get once a month, I know I still have a stack. Now you are lucky if you get some junky, half-assed email twice a year.

[Shift]

The sad truth is that there are many other researches who have written papers on lucid dreaming, who are neglected in favor of LaBerge. In all the papers I have collected, I have yet to read something about MRI.

[Lady Grimbones]

Who are these others? I haven't heard of anything, but then I am not a scientist and I don't know about what others might be doing I only know of LB because of his books and the LI. Wish I had some money to fund some research. A person could use the excuse that you could make a fortune off of some device to sell to people to use as a virtual reality tool. Or whatever. :-)

[Shift]

Some of the names I've actually got are Cicogna and Bosinelli, Gackenbach, Blackmore, Patrick and Durndell, Erlacher and Schredl (especially, these guys have written some interesting stuff), Kozmova´ and Wolman, Tang Sharma and Whyte, Holzinger LaBerge (see, one of many ) and Levitan, Liaugminas, and Paulsson and Parker, all writing about or conducting research and actually publishing papers on lucid dreaming. There are a ton of research articles I've been able to find online but required purchase or I was not able to access, so there are quite a few more out there, and on top of that all of the ones I haven't heard about, and these are only papers published in English. I'm sure there are a few in other languages, too. I also only searched for the terms I'm aware of that refer to lucid dreaming, I'm sure there are some I don't know and so haven't come across yet simply because I haven't been searching with the right criteria.

[Lady Grimbones]

Patricia Garfield wrote some good books on dreaming in general, I don't remember if she wrote anything specific on lucid dreaming though. Jane Gackenback, I think I read something of hers before. I'll google these names. :-)

[Luminous]

I had a lucid dream the other night, first one in a long time, and I woke up soon after getting lucid and that seems to be a regular problem with everyone. Since it is a common problem I was thinking that there must be some part of our brain that is normally 'asleep' during dreaming and that is why it is hard for us to get lucid and recall dreams in general. Could there be a way to quiet this part but still remain lucid and why hasn't someone like LaBerge done MRI, or has he?, to know exactly what is going on, or at least as close to as you can, in the brain at this lucid stage? He could make a drug or some sort of magnetic 'hat' thing that would help turn on that part of the brain or simulate a lucid dream experience or whatever. If we could get a 'picture' of the lucid dreaming brain we could recreate that pattern in other brains. They have magnetic 'hats' that they have been using to test Buddhist meditators and such if they knew what areas to turn on or off they could recreate that pattern in anyone's mind even those not technically asleep and you could have lucid dreams at any time. In theory anyway. Just a thought. :-) I has been done, at least once. Such an experiment is very expensive, which is why it hasn't been done sooner, because the researchers will have to be 100% sure that the subject will be able to not only have a lucid dream while in the MRI machine, but the subject must also be able to fall asleep in one! And those things are noisy and narrow. I was told this when I was in Sweden a few months ago at a dreaming conference where I attended a presentation on lucid dreaming research. I talked to the researchers afterwards, and we discussed the MRI thing. We kept getting interrupted, so I didn't quite get what they had proven, but I think they said that it was the part of the brain that deals with logic which was active in the subject's brain which is usually inactive during REM sleep. I have been invited to their sleep lab myself, and they are considering using me for this experiment. They can't draw the conclusion from just one experiment with one subject.

[Lady Grimbones]

Could you give me some more information on this dream conference and if there is any online papers or something I could read. I am really interested in the science that is going on and want to read more of what real researchers are doing rather than us normal folk who do the best we can but are not able to do really controlled experiments. Like I'd like to know more about Taurine's affect on the brain and dreaming, there are plenty of anectodal, sp?, reports online about people having vivid dreams after consuming this amino acid and also Chantix, a stop smoking medicine, is supposed to cause vivid dreams and I am thinking seriously of trying it. And this logic center, I don't guess that would actually help to stabilize dreams would it? I mean, you can be logical and lucid but still the dream can change on you, like the reality writing test for example, and you can still do strange things like walk through walls. Thanks :-)

[Luminous]

Here is the info page from the conference I attended, but as far as I'm aware of, none of the papers are published. http://www.asdreams.org/2009sweden/index.htm No, logic doesn't really do anything to dream stability. I've experienced that myself. I can be at my most lucid and draw logic conclusions, but text will still be unstable and the dream environment will still change to some extent when I look away and then back. Again, the conversation kept getting interrupted so I only got half the story, and this was unrelated to the presentation which had to do with how long it takes to perform certain tasks in lucid dreams versus when awake (doing 10 squats)

[kneejo]

the easiest way to recreate brain patterns seems to me to simply remember fully.

[Lady Grimbones]

If it were that easy this board would be all dream journals and no constant questions on 'how do I'.

[tranquilitybytrey]

From what I've read, during sleep, the parts of the brain that govern memory and attention are put to rest. The interesting side of this subject is that every other part of the brain have a higher conductivitiy than while awake (their working overtime). Perhaps then while we are lucid, the memory or simply the attention span part of the brain is reactivated and is the reason we are able to create entire worlds to interact with in our dreams.