Once dreams can be fully controlled, they could become a business opportunity akin to that depicted in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film, Total Recall.
Dreams are narratives and images our minds create while we sleep, covering a wide array of themes such as fun, romance, horror, and sometimes quite bizarre scenarios. Have you ever inserted your consciousness into a dream and changed its course? Like when you’re being attacked by dinosaurs in a dream and you think of transforming into a superhero to triumph. Numerous studies have been conducted to decode what happens in dreams, and today we will explore how to control our dreams.
An Overview of Sleep
There are five stages of the sleep cycle, which repeat 5-6 times each night:
- Stage 1 is known as light sleep, where your eye movements slow down and your muscles relax.
- Stage 2 sees the cessation of eye movement and slower brain waves. This stage accounts for about half of your sleep time.
- Stage 3 features very slow brain waves, with the beginning appearance of delta waves.
- Stage 4 is deep sleep, where the brain produces a significant amount of delta waves. There is no eye movement, and the body enters a state of paralysis. If someone is awakened during this stage, they may feel disoriented until their consciousness fully returns.
- Stage 5 is known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. Breathing becomes more rapid, eyes dart in various directions, and heart rate and blood pressure increase. This stage is when you are about to wake up, consciousness begins to return, and dreams occur. Therefore, this is the moment when you can control your dreams.
Dreams are often perplexing and nebulous experiences. In dreams, we are less critical and more in touch with actual memories. The impulses and heightened emotions in dreams often result in mild headaches upon waking in the morning.
However, dreams do not always unfold this way. According to Popsci, more than half of us experience the ability to control our dreams at least once in our lifetime. Nearly a quarter will encounter lucid dreams at least once a month or more.
There are two significant changes in the brain responsible for this state. The prefrontal cortex, which governs higher cognitive functions typically suppressed during ordinary dreaming, becomes more active during lucid dreams.
Researchers also observe an increase in gamma waves, emitted by groups of neurons involved in conscious cognition, that have a greater frequency.
Lucid dreaming allows you to control everything in your dreams. (Image: Popsci).
Scientists are interested in how to impact the brain to control this process. Not only for the joy of dream control, but there is hope that lucid dreaming will provide valuable insights into how consciousness forms within the brain.
For instance, the application of lucid dreaming therapy holds great potential for treating individuals with chronic nightmares and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
People with PTSD often experience recurring nightmares related to a traumatic event. These recurrent nightmares can be so terrifying that they induce anxiety, insomnia, and negatively affect daily functioning.
With lucid dreaming, individuals experiencing nightmares can realize that what they are experiencing is not real and subsequently transform the nightmare into a pleasant dream.
Lucid dreams also provide an opportunity to improve motor skills through enhanced brain activity. Using mental imagery to practice motor skills has been shown to improve the performance of athletes, surgeons, and musicians.
Additionally, it aids in the rehabilitation of hand control and other motor tasks, such as for patients recovering from neurological injuries.
This technique works on the principle of creating imagery, then activating the related neural structures through movement, as if one is actually performing the action, with the only difference being that the body remains immobile.
Nightmares are the source of many ailments. (Image: Shutterstock).
Various techniques have been developed and tested to induce lucid dreams in recent years, yet none have proven consistently reliable and successful for every individual.
This does not mean these techniques are ineffective. Some hold significant potential, though most remain in their infancy. Below are the most promising techniques, most of which can be tried at home.
The first is a type of cognitive technique, involving activities performed in the morning or while asleep. According to a study from the University of Adelaide with 169 Australian participants, the combination of three techniques results in the most successful lucid dreams: reality testing, Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD), and Wake-Back-to-Bed (WBTB).
The reality testing method involves frequently asking yourself while awake whether you are dreaming or not, and performing a self-checking action. The famous film Inception references this technique with a totem, which usually stops spinning, but if you are dreaming, it continues to spin.
If you don’t like carrying a spinning top in your pocket, you can pinch your nose to see if you can breathe. Repeating the action of “asking yourself if you are dreaming” throughout the day helps embed this action into your subconscious as a habit.
When you are actually dreaming, the subconscious, which is less influenced by consciousness, will create a similar habit for you. If you can still breathe while pinching your nose, you will realize that you are dreaming and gain control over the dream.
In the Mneumonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming (MILD) technique, one imagines a dream and repeats a mantra expressing the intention, such as: “Next time I am dreaming, I want to remember that I am dreaming.”
For best results, it is recommended to perform the Wake-Back-to-Bed (WBTB) technique. Specifically, set an alarm clock for one or two hours before your usual wake-up time. After waking for a few minutes, try to go back to sleep; you are more likely to have a lucid dream.
The brief awakening for a few minutes is believed to increase activation in the cortex in brain regions important for lucid dreaming as one returns to sleep during REM, the stage of sleep when the brain is actively working and dreams occur.
Students can set their phone alarms each morning to hit the snooze button, allowing their phones to ring repeatedly, which can also lead to lucid dreaming.
Hypnosis charts show that REM sleep duration increases with each sleep cycle. (Image: Wikimedia Commons).
As shown in the image above, lucid dreams often occur around 4:30 to 5:00 AM. If it’s later, you may wake up completely. If it’s earlier, you may lose control of the dream and sink back into deep sleep.
Recent research indicates that pharmacological interventions can prolong sleep to facilitate the occurrence of lucid dreams. For example, galantamine, an enzyme inhibitor commonly used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, has been shown to significantly increase the rate of lucid dreaming experiences when used in conjunction with WBTB and MILD techniques. However, the side effects of the medication still need to be considered.
Our understanding of lucid dreams has advanced significantly over the past decade. There is still much work to be done before dreams become a business opportunity like in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall.
