Have you ever been dreaming and suddenly realized that you were in fact in a dream?
That’s lucid dreaming.
Until recently lucid dreaming wasn’t even studied by sleep scientists because they didn’t believe in it. The notion of consciousness during sleep seemed to be a contradiction and an impossibility.
Not everyone can or does lucid dream, but those who do report that once their brain twigs to the fact that “this is just a dream,” they can then control what happens in the dream. Thus they can decide to fly, have super strength, reset the dream, or change to a completely different dream. It sounds cool, and for this reason, some people try to teach themselves to lucid dream. Techniques to do this include keeping a dream journal, and setting your alarm to wake you at unusual times of the night.
But now, if a new technique proves effective, a machine might help. A mask worn when you sleep that blinks red lights into your eyes may be the key to teaching people to lucid dream. The idea is that over time the flashing red light acts as a signal to you, to alert you that you are dreaming. And when your brain learns the association your brain will get the signal that it’s in a dream state. The mask, called ‘Remee,‘ is the invention of a Brooklyn based lab run by Steve McGuigan and Duncan McCloud Frazier, who set up Bitbanger Labs to develop the mask with Kickstarter funding.
“The first time anybody lucid dreams and manages to stay asleep, [they choose] to fly,” said McGuigan. “It’s an exhilarating feeling to fly in your dreams. But there are still so many things that you can do. Their creative output is just different inside a dream.”
Living in your own Matrix/Inception fantasy every night sounds like fun. But after the night-time adventures, what’s the effect on your brain and are there any risks?
The little scientific evidence is mixed. One study showed a correlation between lucid dreaming and depression. But another study found that it was beneficial, with lucid dreaming linked to resilience to stressful events.
On the one hand lucid dreaming seems to just happen naturally in some individuals, so maybe it gets a pass as a natural phenomenon.
On the other hand, training your brain to have vivid dreams and exciting experiences, like anything, could easily become an addictive or obsessive behavior. At face value it looks like just one more activity like all the existing activities that humans get addicted to.
Is it a good idea to live the most interesting and exciting part of your life in your dreams, when you’re asleep? Is it healthy to systematically disrupt your sleep patterns in order to train your sleeping brain to do dream gymnastics? There’s no evidence to say either way. It’s early days for the science of sleep and for systematic, empirical investigations of dreams.
I’m sure the Remee will provide hours of entertainment to many but until the science is in on lucid dreaming and its effects on mental wellbeing, I’ll give it a pass.
