Thread: Published in Nature Neuroscience: 77% induction rate with electrodes on the scalp at 40 Hertz

Originally Posted by StephL

Soo - I have come across an article in WIRED on this study, and it is quite sobering to see the background of how they measured lucidity.
Nobody in this study experienced a lucid dream at all, if I understand this correctly.
Here we go:

Spoiler for the beginning of the article - stuff we already know:

There is a discrepancy, though, with what is written in the livescience article linked up in the OP:



The wording I fattened is suspicious - but the below quote?

I have linked up to diagrams of the original paper only - there is no more - and I don't think, they can resolve this.
One needed to get at the complete paper.


By the way - another 2 interesting WIRED articles around the topic:
The Unfinished Science Behind the New Wave of Electrical Brain Stimulation | Science | WIRED
Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation | Magazine | WIRED

Steph,

I think you're right to an extent about this WIRED article but it also illustrates a fine point about the term "lucid dreaming".

Lucidity can't really be viewed as a PASS/FAIL result because the complexities that determine this state of consciousness are so numerous and often independent of each other. What I mean is, there's a difference between being "lucid" in a dream versus being truly "cognizant" in a dream, with the latter being a state of pure consciousness wherein you have gained not just basic engagement but also volition/control and the ability to carry on that state for longer than a brief moment.

It's possible the goal of lucidity in the Voss/Hobson study was achieved when they simply made a user less dissociative (1.3 of 5.0 being a good score), which could arguably apply to lower-level lucidity. To me the measurements of insight and control apply more to a higher-level "cognizant" dreaming state, though they were not necessary to claim success of simple lower-level lucidity.

I've always believed that to become truly lucid in a dream it needs to be a product of your own volition so that it can be maintained for longer than a brief moment. In this study the gamma-zap to the frontal lobes brought a brief and fleeting surge of awareness in the same way that a defibrillator brings a jolt to the heart. Draw your own conclusions on that metaphor

Originally Posted by jonesn

Lucidity can't really be viewed as a PASS/FAIL result because the complexities that determine this state of consciousness are so numerous and often independent of each other. What I mean is, there's a difference between being "lucid" in a dream versus being truly "cognizant" in a dream, with the latter being a state of pure consciousness wherein you have gained not just basic engagement but also volition/control and the ability to carry on that state for longer than a brief moment.

That's a good point. I sometimes have difficulty deciding whether a particular dream I've had was lucid or not.

Originally Posted by jonesn

It's possible the goal of lucidity in the Voss/Hobson study was achieved when they simply made a user less dissociative (1.3 of 5.0 being a good score), which could arguably apply to lower-level lucidity. To me the measurements of insight and control apply more to a higher-level "cognizant" dreaming state, though they were not necessary to claim success of simple lower-level lucidity.

I've always believed that to become truly lucid in a dream it needs to be a product of your own volition so that it can be maintained for longer than a brief moment. In this study the gamma-zap to the frontal lobes brought a brief and fleeting surge of awareness in the same way that a defibrillator brings a jolt to the heart. Draw your own conclusions on that metaphor

The question is whether that brief surge of awareness could transform a regular dream into a true LD. It did so in at least one case in the Nature paper:

Example of lucid dream report following 40-Hz stimulation. I was dreaming about lemon cake. It looked translucent, but then again, it didn’t. It was a bit like in an animated movie, like the Simpsons. And then I started falling and the scenery changed and I was talking to Matthias Schweighöfer (a German actor) and 2 foreign exchange students. And I was wondering about the actor and they told me “yes, you met him before,” so then I realized “oops, you are dreaming.” I mean, while I was dreaming! So strange!

Sounds like they woke the subjects up before they had a chance to experience much lucidity. The tACS stimulation was applied for 30 seconds. Then 10 seconds later, the subjects were woken up. As a follow-up experiment, it would be interesting to see how long the lucidity could be maintained once it has been induced.