Hyperfixed - Presenting: Science Vs. - Lucid Dreaming: The Bonkers World Inside Our Minds

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

I've known Wendy, the host of Science Vs. for almost a decade at this point, and her show is spectacular! We are sharing an episode of her show on the feed this week, just because we love her and would like you all to hear it. You can find many more episodes of Science Vs. on SpotifyThere is a new bonus episode on our premium feed this week -- if you are interested in hearing that and getting a bunch of other fun premium perks you can sign up here:https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/joinIf you'd like a limited edition button from our recent episode as part of signing up for the premium feed, you can do that here:https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/buttonSee you next week with a new main feed episode! EPISODE DESCRIPTION:Some people can control their dreams. While they're fast asleep: they fly, create new worlds, live other lives. But Wendy isn't one of them. So in today's episode, Wendy and the Science Vs team find a scientifically approved method to try to lucid dream. We test it out — and bizarre things start happening. We also explore how scientists are trying to harness the strange powers of lucid dreaming to help people, as well as to crack huge scientific mysteries, like: What is consciousness? And what exactly goes on in all of our heads when we're asleep? To do all this and more, we talk to psychologists Dr. Denholm Adventure-Heart and Dr. Brigitte Holzinger, as well as cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Başak Türker.You can find an episode transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsLucidDreaming

Hey, everybody. This is a special episode of Hyperfixed because it's not actually an episode of Hyperfixed. My friend, Wendy Zuckerman, she is the host of a podcast called Science Versus. And we are going to be playing you an episode of the show. And Wendy is actually here with me, not in the studio because she lives in Australia and I live in the United States. So she is about as far from the studio being my basement as she can be but hi Wendy how you doing hi I love that you said she's in Australia as if it was Mars guys guys can you believe this I have only recently learned about the volume of deadly animals in Australia and I I have always wanted to visit it It sounds so amazing. And I'm now very scared. The spider thing is like the spiders are too big. I'll be honest. No, no. I mean, you guys have snakes in America.

You have dangerous political leaders. I mean, I really feel like Australia is safer at this point. So you probably know about this as a science person, but maybe not. There is an invasive species, but it's like a harmless invasive species of spider called a Joro spider that has been introduced in the United States. And it is slowly making its way northward. And it's about, they average about two and a half inches. And when they get here, I'm fucking out of here. I don't care where I'm going. I'm going to an island. I mean, I have such a soft spot for any animal that has been able to survive this concrete, terrible landscape that we've created for them. A pigeon.

Just any animal that's like, okay, I can deal with this. Am I on a ship right now? All right. I guess I'll survive. Oh, I'm now in Ohio. Yeah, I can handle that. I mean, it's amazing. I'm like, go get him.

Go get him, spider. You live your best life. Apparently, they also, like, are totally chill in cities and we should be expecting them to just, like, make huge cobwebs in the middle of Manhattan. And I'm just like,

this sounds too much like a horror movie. I can't handle it. I've got to go somewhere. It's the Arctic Circle for me. That's the only place I can go. That's the only place they haven't reached just yet. Spoken like a real science person. Get out of here with that crap.

Speaking of science, can you tell us a little bit about your show? Yeah, yeah. So the show is called Science Versus. And so what we do on the show is we take ideas that are in the zeitgeist, whether it's about a brand new diet, how much protein you need to eat, what's going on in your mind as you're dreaming, is the pill, the contraceptive pill, dangerous? Just did an episode about that because there's lots of new fears

around what the pill is doing to our bodies and our brains. So we just take these ideas that are rolling around the internet and then we kind of interrogate them with this ridiculous amount of scientific research. And we try and put a little bit of humor to it so you don't realize how much research we've done and we just give you the facts. Yeah, it's a sugar pill of science.

They're giving you like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Exactly, exactly. And one of the things that I like about the fact that it is so zeitgeisty is like every time I have a real question, I feel like within six months it is a science versus science. Oh, that's great. That's great. I mean, I really the show having gone for so long, I did not think it was going to survive this long. I mean, when we first met Alex Alex, and I was thinking of,

well, what kind of episodes have we got? We got climate change because back then people were still wondering, is that real? We got a couple of episodes on vaccines. Surely we'll tick them all off. But in fact, the internet over the last 10 years has just been minting more and more mythology, garbage, pseudoscience than ever before. And so, unfortunately or fortunately, I think this show is going to be running for quite some time.

So we are going to be running an episode of your show on our feed today, which is the Lucid Dreaming episode. Can you tell me a little bit about this episode? Like, what was the question you were trying to answer? With Lucid Dreaming, I mean, it's funny. It's a topic that either fascinates people or, Alex, perhaps you have this reaction. I don't want to hear about your dreams. I don't want to hear about your lucid dreams. Where do you fit on the spectrum of fascination with lucid dreaming? Oh, no. The idea of lucid dreaming is really fascinating to me. Like, I would love to be able to do it. Yeah, I think it's very fascinating. The science behind it is super interesting. For those who don't know, a lucid dream is a dream that you can

sort of control certain elements of it, in some cases, all of the elements of it. And scientists really since the 70s have been wondering if we can harness this to understand ourselves better, to understand dreaming better, consciousness better. And it's kind of this strange vessel to just understand the human mind because it's in such a weird state. You're asleep, but you can control things and you can only control certain things. So something we don't really talk about too deeply in the episode is when I would speak to all these people who would have lucid dreams and you can read some academic papers about it. Some people would have these lucid dreams where they would find themselves in this really fun

environment. The Eiffel Tower is right there. There's a beautiful garden. And then they would talk to someone, but they couldn't control the person they were talking to. And the person would do certain weird things. And so from a scientific perspective, that's really interesting. Why can you control some things and not other things? Because ultimately, it is all your brain. There's nothing else there. It's all you. And so why can you control certain things? What is happening in the brain of a lucid dreamer? We just sort of had all of these questions. And in today's political climate, it just felt like such a beautiful space to live in for a moment, just in our dreams,

rather than in reality. I feel like I've had moments once or twice in my life where I've realized like, oh, I'm dreaming. I wonder if I can control something. And then woken up before I've had the chance. I feel like that was just me regaining consciousness. Yes. It's not the same as being able to actually control my dreams. It is classified as a lucid dream, but it's not the fun stuff, right? It's step one. It's sort of step one, as listeners will hear about how to get, because that was, is, oh,

I don't want to spoil it but that is that was exactly me i have had a few moments like that and then i'll wake up or go back to sleep but i kind of wanted to see if i could do it for real for in the fun fun controlling sense awesome well i am excited to listen to this um as i have not yet a full full disclosure can you tell people how they can find you and anything else they should know about the show? Yes, to find us, you can just search for Science Versus,

which is Science VS on any podcast platform or on Spotify, Apple, and come and say hello. We're on all the social media stuff. Give us an idea if you've heard some nonsense or maybe not nonsense on the internet and you want us to fact check it. Let us know. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. And for everybody listening, please enjoy the lucid dreaming episode of Science Versus.

Whoa, this is incredible. And I like flew around in like big loop-de-loops. I'm up high. I'm looking down at the trees. I'm feeling the wind in my hair and just totally going for it. I felt like I'd unlocked something like super magical. Then I really did have the sensation. I was like, this feels to me like what it would feel like to be flying in the sky. I was like, this feels to me like what it would feel like to be flying in the sky.

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against flying as we swoop into the world of lucid dreaming. There are people that have a superpower where they know that they're dreaming and sometimes can even control what happens next. And in their dreams, people all over the world are saying, OK, great, let's fly. And that's what I did. I was just flying up and down the staircase. I found myself flying through a beautiful landscape, I guess similar to New Zealand. And the insanely almost magical thing about lucid dreaming is that people who do this

will tell you that it feels real. It's not like closing your eyes and imagining that you're flying or doing whatever. You're really there. It feels so real. You're like, how is this possible? It feels so real. And like you can hear, you can smell, you can even taste. You know, I've had lucid dreams where I've just gone to a banquet and just tried all the different foods on the table. I could also have superpowers and go on epic missions into outer space and it was just this like playground in your own mind.

A playground to be whoever you want to be. And for some folks, this isn't just a bit of fun. They're also trying to use lucid dreaming to improve their mental health, overcome fears, and to understand themselves better. That's how my friend Archer used lucid dreaming. He's the guy going... down the staircase. Archer is a trans man. He wasn't born with a penis. And for years now, he wished that he had one. So in a lucid dream, I decided to summons a penis.

a lucid dream, I decided to summons a penis. And then the penis appeared. I made one in a dream. How did it feel? A bit underwhelming. So I tried it out in a dream. I used it in a sexy way and it was like, this is fine, but it wasn't amazing, you know, not this great thing that I needed to complete my body and then I would be happy, healthy guy out in the world. How big was this for you? How big was it? How big was the moment, Ard?

That was one part of a healing process for me and now I'm in a place where I can't actually, now I don't really want a penis anymore. That's just for me, obviously. It's really important for some people. Have you since practised lucid dreaming for any other kind of sexy dreams? Yeah. I mean, I'm only human.

This is a magical power you have. So today on the show, we are going to teach you how to lucid dream. That's right. Scientists have studied the best way to get this superpower. And we will reveal their peer-reviewed secrets. We'll also explore how researchers are trying to harness the strange powers of lucid dreaming to help people through trauma and depression

and to crack these huge scientific mysteries, like what is consciousness and what exactly goes on in all of our heads when we're asleep. When it comes to lucid dreaming, there's a lot of let's fly. And then there's science. Science versus lucid dreaming is coming up just after the break. welcome back today we are flying into the dream world or at least we're trying to and if we want to channel lucid dreaming to improve our lives the first step is to learn how to do this because for many of, it doesn't come easy. I mean, studies find that around half of us will have had at least one lucid dream in our lifetime.

But not all lucid dreams are created equal. For me, the best I've gotten is that I'll realise I'm dreaming for a moment and then I either wake up or go back to regular sleep. And my lacklustre lucid experience is pretty common. One study reckoned that only around a third of people who lucid dream can manipulate what they're doing in their dreams. So how can we up our game and learn how to become gods in the dream world? For this, we need Dr. Denham Adventureheart, a psychologist in Brisbane, Australia. Denham lives with sciatica, which can cause this nasty pain throughout his body. And several years ago, things got really bad. When it was at its worst,

it was so limiting that it was, you know, it was very difficult and painful to even take the bins out at night. There were some days when he could barely get out of bed. Well, unless he was lucid dreaming. Every now and then, Denham would find himself in a lucid dream. And there, he could escape his illness. I could do anything. You know, I could, not only could I get up and run and, you know, explore and go to new worlds and whatever my imagination could conjure,

it actually really helped my quality of life because it gave me something to be excited about. The problem was that Denham couldn't play in this playground very often. He'd go to sleep and night after night, no running, no new worlds. And he'd wake up still stuck in bed, in pain. So Denham decides that he's going to train himself to get better at lucid dreaming. And he gets really into this thing called reality testing or reality checks. And these are huge in the lucid dreaming world. I mean, just ask Christopher Nolan about it. It was an inception. So to understand how this could work, it's helpful to

know that often people will spontaneously have a lucid dream because they'll be stuck in the middle of a dream and something really weird will happen that makes them think, what, this has to be a dream. And voila, they're lucid. And so reality testing is all about trying to hack that process. So here's what Denim would do. While he was awake, he'd close his mouth tightly and then try to inhale through his mouth. Wait, I want to try it. So you've got your mouth closed. Yeah, and then try to inhale with your lips closed. And it doesn't work, right? If you think you're doing this, you're actually breathing through your nose. So the fact that you can't do it tells you that this is not a dream. You are awake and listening

to this podcast. But Denham had read that in dreams, you can breathe through a closed mouth. And that was true for him. It almost always will feel different. You can feel this sense of closed lips, but at the same time, you can feel the air just entering your lungs and breathing in through your mouth at the same time.

Really? Yeah, it's really bizarre. Another super popular reality test is trying to poke your finger straight through your palm. Obviously, while you're awake, it doesn't work. But in the dream world, people say that your finger does go through your palm. And so the idea here is that you will do these reality checks tons of times throughout the day. And because most dreams are reflections of the stuff that we're doing throughout our day, you hope that then in a dream, you will also do a

reality test. And when you feel that air moving through your closed mouth or you see your finger slip through your palm, then you'll realise this is a dream and you'll be lucid. And so it's almost like trying to prime yourself to accidentally discover that you're dreaming. You realise, ah, I'm in a dream. That's the moment of lucidity. So Denim is sick at home and he's doing these reality tests a lot. Oh, jeez.

I went pretty overboard with it. I probably was doing it hundreds of times a day at some of those periods. Oh, wow. But it was strange because he wasn't having that many lucid dreams. And so was it frustrating? Super frustrating. I know how amazing these experiences are and I know that I can access them, but they're just not coming as often as I would like. So it was incredibly frustrating. So Denham starts thinking, what's going on here?

Is it just me? And being a scientist, he decides to study it. He sets up an experiment recruiting more than 350 people from all around the world, making this the largest study I could find on inducing lucid dreams. To get a baseline for seven days, everyone would record how many dreams they were having and how many of those were lucid. Then Denham puts everyone into different groups. Some are told to practice reality testing. They do it for seven days. And guess what? Reality testing didn't seem to really make that much of a difference. That's very interesting because even then I have spoken to quite a lot of lucid dreaming academics and asked them all, how should I do this? And they've all said, you should try reality testing. Like it's so embedded in the zeitgeist around lucid dreaming

and yet your study found it actually didn't work. Oh, it was very surprising because like you said, this is like the common wisdom is do reality testing and the more the better. And it's not even like doing it 100 times is better than 10. It just didn't actually seem to matter that much. And so it kind of goes against the grain of what most people will tell you. Other smaller studies have found this too.

On average, we can't see a statistical link between reality testing and having a lucid dream. And one reason for this could be because reality tests can fail, in that even in your dream, you still can't put your finger through your palm, which makes perfect sense. We know that dreams are super subjective, unlike what you might read on a lucid dreaming Reddit post. There's no physics or biology in the dream world that means your hands are made of putty. But in Denham's study, he was

testing other lucid dreaming techniques as well. And he did find something that worked. It's called mnemonic induction of lucid dreams. And in Denham's study, on average, about one in six times that people tried this method, they had a lucid dream. One in six. Wow. That's a pretty good rate. It's a very good rate. Here's what you've got to do. You set your alarm clock. Yeah. So it goes off at about five hours after you've gone to sleep. That's rubbish. Five hours. Yeah, look, it's a bit of a necessary evil, unfortunately. You're waking up at around 4 or 5 a.m.

because you're trying to catch yourself in REM sleep, which is where most of us have our lucid dreams. Okay, so once you wake up... Imagine yourself being back in a dream, ideally the one you were just in. Imagine yourself walking around, noticing something like a pink elephant or something strange. So you're trying to remember the dream that you were just in. You're visualizing yourself being back there. And what you're doing is trying to notice something unusual that might make you realize, hey, I'm dreaming. And as you're awake, repeat this mantra.

Next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember that I'm dreaming. You keep doing it until you really are feeling into that intention that next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember that I'm dreaming. Like that strength of intention has got to be strong. Once that's set, then you just go back to sleep as normal. In Denham's study, people were roughly three times more likely to have a lucid dream after doing this compared to that week where they weren't doing anything special. And other studies have found that this technique works as well. As a little tip, if you can go back to sleep quickly, within five minutes after doing all the mantra stuff,

you up your chance of having a lucid dream even more. Plus, the people in Denham's study who had never really tried lucid dreaming before had a similar success rate to those who were more experienced. So it shows that even beginners can learn this quite quickly. Do you think that everyone can have a lucid dream? Like if they really put their mind to it, do you think we're all capable of this? I don't know for sure, but if I had to hazard a guess,

I would say there probably are some people that could spend a lot of time on this and still not be able to lucid dream. But I would say for most people, it's a learnable skill. A learnable skill, you say. Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming. Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming. Next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming. And next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. In Denham's research, people who were far from lucid dreaming ninjas could learn this in just one week.

So my editor, Blythe Terrell, senior producer, Rose Ribbler, and I, we wanted to fly. Actually, for Rose, she had a very particular dream that she wanted to conjure up. You know what? Sometimes to relax, I imagine that I've become very, very small and I'm like the height of a blade of grass and I get to walk around and sit on a mushroom like a toadstool and use a dandelion as a umbrella and that kind of thing. So it'd be kind of fun if I could do that in my dream and then it'd be really of fun if I could do that in my dream

and then it would be really vivid and it would be more real than just my awake imagination. Oh, that's so cute, Rose. So I explained how we were going to do this, that we'd wake up five hours after going to sleep, we would try to remember the dream we were just in, we'd think about all the weird stuff that obviously makes it a dream, and then we'd say the mantra. It should take five to ten minutes.

Five to ten? At four in the morning or whatever? Yeah. Man, you guys have your work cut out for you. I'm glad I can already do this. So you are just here to brag. Confirmed. Astute ears listening to this podcast might notice that Blythe was one of the voices you heard at the start of the show. She was flying in a lucid dream doing those big loop-de-loops. But Blythe can't do this very often, so she wants to see if she can supercharge her superpower.

And Rose and I are going to find out if we can control things in our dreams for the very first time. I'm excited. I'm pumped. How are you feeling, Wendy? I am not optimistic at all, in fact. For me. For me. But I'm really trying to have a positive attitude.

All right. Meet back in a week. Give ourselves a week. Okay. Okay, this is day one of the lucid dreaming experiment okay i just woke up um i don't remember what my dream is was okay um but so i'll try to remember a different dream. I, like, can't remember any dreams. Um, I actually woke up during a dream where I was covered in ticks. Like, making these huge abscesses on my legs.

It's really gross. Okay, the next time I dream, I will remember I am dreaming. Did try, did the mantra, but no outcome. Well, spoiler alert, it didn't work. I did not lose the dream. Um, day whatever. It didn't work. It didn't work.

Another flop today. Yeah, I don't know. It sucks. It's not for me. So, it's not going great, but I'm not giving up. I'm too curious. I want to know what it feels like to walk around inside my own mind. And soon I start looking around online for things to help me.

There's this drug that people talk about called galantamine. It sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings, but we think it keeps you in REM for longer than normal, and research has actually found that it can up your chance of having a lucid dream. But it's only really been studied by getting people to take the drug when they wake up at stupid o'clock anyway, while they're doing the technique that we're already doing. Plus, the drug has some side effects. So forget it. There are also masks that you can get for sometimes thousands of dollars, claiming that their lights or sounds can help you,

quote, unlock the world of lucidity where everything is possible, end quote. And the idea behind some of these masks is actually really interesting because there is research that shows that if you, for example, play someone a particular sound, like three beeps, while they're awake and doing a set of instructions about becoming lucid when they're dreaming, and then you play that sameid when they're dreaming, and then you play that same sound when they're asleep, it could cue you to become lucid in that moment. But when it comes to these masks that you can buy online, very few have actually been tested or shown to work.

After the break, we go deep inside the brain to find out how people can control things in their dreams Welcome back today on the show, Lucid Dreaming. And now let's find out what is happening in our brains as we go on these grand adventures and have a lucid dream. So if you want to know what's going on in someone's brain as they're lucid you first have to know the moment that that person who is fast asleep has become lucid but they're asleep right they can't tell you well decades ago researchers worked out a kind of bonkers way to do this. And I talked about it with Dr. Bashak Turka, a cognitive neuroscientist at Paris City University. So she told me that lucid dreamers will come into a lab.

Tell them to sleep. And if they are having a dream that they're aware of, a lucid dream, they can send a signal. And the bat signal that researchers chose is that the lucid dreamers would move their eyes all the way to the left and then all the way to the right. And they do that a couple of times. And all the while, they'd have sensors on their face and head to detect eye muscle movements and to make sure that they were sleeping. on their face and head to detect eye muscle movements and to make sure that they were sleeping. And with this idea, which is, for me, it's incredible, they actually managed to show that sleeping people

were actually sending the eye signals to tell, I'm having a lucid dream. With this bat signal, scientists can now probe what's going on in someone's brain while they're lucid. Which brings us to the story of Bashak and a lucid dreamer who we'll call AC. AC has narcolepsy, which is a sleep disorder where you fall asleep randomly throughout the day.

And for reasons we don't fully understand, it's linked with lucid dreaming. So this illness comes with a superpower. You also become a great lucid dreamer. So he was having a lot of lucid dreaming. So this illness comes with a superpower. You also become a great lucid dreamer. So he was having a lot of lucid dreams and he would tell us about his adventures in the night. I basically spend like one or two hours of my day lucid dreaming. This is AC.

So for me, it's like having a second life. So, and I don't usually talk about it because nobody wants to hear about it. Because no one wants to hear about your dream. AC had been involved in some lucid dreaming experiments where he had to do the bat signal to indicate he was lucid. But he wanted to boldly take lucid dreaming science where no one had gone before.

And Bishak and her colleague were intrigued. So we thought, OK, that's great. So we can maybe do a little experiment on you. It was in the afternoon. There was a room free. And it was like, OK, let's try something. The plan was simple. Bishak and her colleague would ask him yes, no questions

while he was fast asleep, but lucid. And he would try to answer them, smiling three times for yes and frowning three times for no. And this is something that for years science had thought was kind of impossible. I mean, sometimes you might ask a partner in the middle of the night, hey, did you take the trash out? And they kind of respond. So they answer and they mumble. They're like, and sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. We call them micro arousal. So your brain kind of wakes up for a second.

So if you look at their brain activity, you can see that they're not asleep in that moment. You might have woken them up. We also know that in some of the earlier stages of sleep, you are aware of the awake world. But once you are conked out, dead to the world in deep sleep or REM, you're not supposed to answer questions. So, Bishak and her colleague put sensors all around AC's head and face to measure whether he's asleep and what his mouth muscles are doing. Bishak tells AC, nighty-night, or whatever scientists say to each other, and AC lays on the lab bed and goes to sleep.

But I think we were still a bit naive about it. We're like, yeah, let's try, but we didn't really. We were like, it might work, but it might not work. AC is in deep sleep and they could clearly see it on the sensors. But in his dream, he was in an epic battle. I was fighting goblins with a super sword.

He becomes lucid and signals to Bishak using the bat signal. And then we ask them, for example, some questions. And here's where it gets weird. AC remembers hearing those questions from within the dream. It's like a voice from above, you know, when you're in the station and there's an announcement, but you don't know where it

comes from. Just like that. Bishak asks, do you like chocolate? Do you like chocolate? And so I smiled three times. Yeah, I like chocolate. And when Bishak sees the smile, she's not sure it's real. Is he really sleeping? And we were checking the brain activity. He is. But he's responding, right? She's like, yeah, yeah, he's responding. She asks more questions.

Do you watch football? Do you speak Spanish? And actually, I was lucid enough to think about, okay, I can say a couple of words, but does that mean that I'm speaking Spanish? No, that doesn't make sense. I'm going to say no. And you're fighting goblins at the same time.

Yeah, that's quite epic. And while AC is having a fine time, Bishak and her colleague were starting to freak out. We were like, do you see what I'm seeing? And she was like, yes. So it was crazy because we were communicating with someone who was dreaming. And we were alone in this room and super excited. And you know, like half yelling with excitement and half shocked.

I think it was one of the scientifically the best moments of my life, I would say, when I saw that. No, I felt like we discovered a new element, you know, it felt so, like we were so, I think I smiled for a week and non-stop. I was so happy. And as Bishak is smiling about this discovery in France, other researchers in the US, Germany and the Netherlands are having similar experiences. And as Bishak is smiling about this discovery in France, other researchers in the US, Germany and the Netherlands are having similar experiences. In one lab, researchers even asked a lucid dreamer, what's eight minus six?

And while he was asleep and lucid, he responded using the bat signal to indicate two. After Bishak saw this, she studied it in more lucid dreamers, who, by the way, all had narcolepsy. And she switched up the experiment a little bit. So this time, while they were asleep, they'd hear all of these fake words like ditza, and then real words like pizza. And they had to smile three times for a real word and frown three times for a fake word. Now, sometimes they didn't respond at all, but a bunch of times they did, and they answered correctly.

But then Bishak noticed something weird. At times, they would answer the question accurately, smile or frown, while they weren't having a lucid dream. So we got a bit curious, confused and excited at the same time. So then she recruits 22 folks who couldn't lucid dream and also didn't have narcolepsy, and she repeats the experiment. It's crazy, but they were also able to do the task. So they were indeed asleep

according to their brain activity, but they were able to respond. Wait, they could, so we could all, so if I went to sleep now and you started asking me what's a word, chances are I would respond. There are chances. It's not all the time, but it looks like there are some transient windows of opening, let's say, in which participants respond and then they stop responding. But the thing is, the lucid dreamers were answering the questions a lot more often. Yes. So if you are lucid dreaming, you tend to respond way more. So this tells us that even when people aren't lucid dreaming, there are these small windows where parts of our brain can listen to the outside world around us and can even figure

out whether a word is real or made up, which upends what many of us had thought about what was going on while we were sleeping. But there was something particularly special about what was going on in the brain of someone who was having a lucid dream. And that meant that those windows where they could respond to the awake world, they were open more often. And in Bishak's study, she saw an important clue as to why this might be. When you're lucid, in our study, what we see is that your brain activity is more complex, more rich and more rapid compared to when they were not lucid. But not so rich that they woke up. Exactly. It's like rich, but not so rich.

Other research is helping us to explain how we can even have a lucid dream in the first place. We think a brain area called the prefrontal cortex is important. So normally when you're dreaming and not lucid, the activity in this part of the brain winds down, which Bishak says might explain why weird things can happen in your dream, and that's fine. In a dream, you might have your mom that transforms to a cat and you wouldn't be shocked. You'd be like, oh yeah, my mom's a cat now, it's okay. It's because probably your frontal cortex is a bit deactivated so you don't get shocked by this. But we think, based on limited evidence,

that while people are lucidly dreaming, this critical area of your brain is more awake. Which allows you to detect anomalies in your dream and be like oh this is a dream because this doesn't make sense this wouldn't happen in everyday life and because lucid dreaming is this hybrid state of consciousness you know between being asleep and awake researchers like Bashak now want to use lucid dreaming to help us understand what consciousness is at all, which remains, according to one review,

quote, one of the largest lacunas in scientific knowledge. And to save you the time, I googled it, and lacuna means unfilled space. And just quickly, some lucid dreams can actually be felt throughout your whole body. Like, if you ask lucid dreamers to hold their breath in a dream, you can see that air stops flowing through your nose and your blood oxygen levels drop just slightly.

In another study, someone had an orgasm in their lucid dream and researchers could measure more blood flowing to her vagina. So, how close are we at Science Versus to having what she's having? A week has gone by and by now have we unlocked this hybrid state of consciousness? Everyone say yay if you've had a lucid dream. One, two, three. Mmm. Mmm.

No luck. No luck. Nope. You actually have this superpower. Has this supercharged your superpower? Zero percent supercharged. Like, I feel like it is actively draining my will to live. Oh, no.

What's going on? If I wake up in the middle of the night, it is very, very hard for me to go back to sleep. I feel like my brain, once it's awake, it's like, ooh, I'm awake. Would you like to think about 10,000 problems or like four weird things you said yesterday? Maybe five? We can keep going. Inside my head, I am just like. Yeah, no.

I was like, I actually do not think this is probably worth it for me. Wendy, how have you, how has it been going for you? Something strange happened. So let me tell you, I woke up and had been in the middle of this dream where me and my, where there was this sort of creepy oval. I'll just jump in and spare you the pain of listening to too many of my dreams. So basically what happened is that I woke up from this dream where a bunch of bonkers stuff is going on. I was getting attacked by bats.

And just as Denim Study suggested, I tried to think of all of the wacky things that clearly made this a dream. But in that moment, in the middle of the night, I couldn't think of any reason why it was obviously a dream. And in that moment, in the middle of the night, I couldn't think of any reason why it was obviously a dream. And then I went back to sleep. The next night, another dream. This time I'm in a tunnel on the beach about to drown and I've got my laptop. I wake up and, well, as I told Blythe and Rose, and the same thing happens. what about this was clearly a dream and i'm like well there could be a tunnel i could i could have brought my laptop to the beach and the second

time it happened i realized maybe i was sleeping the whole time what do you mean like you think you were trying to lucid dream as part of your dream? Like in your dream? Yes. What? I think maybe both times I didn't actually wake up. You just dreamt that you woke up and you dreamt that you tried to lucid dream? Well, does this still matter? If I was asleep the whole time, this is known as a false awakening. And curiously, academics have actually written about this phenomenon where your dreams try to convince you that they're actually not dreams. AC says for him, this happens all the time. It's the people in his lucid dreams who tell him this is not a dream. Like what the f*** is this? And I don't understand why the dream tries so hard to convince me that it's reality. And Denim and Bashak told me that when you think about the neuroscience of lucid dreaming,

in a weird way, this kind of makes sense. The state of the brain is firing in when you're in a lucid dream. It's like a tightrope walk between normal waking consciousness and normal non-lucid dreaming but but that's a difficult state for the brain to maintain you know it almost like it wants to tend towards either just waking up or falling into non-lucidity so maybe it's a way your brain to get back to this, you know, it's natural state. But yeah, I don't know. That's that's very insane that your dream characters would tell you. I know. Exactly. It's completely insane. Okay, our next question. Can we use lucid dreaming to help us in our lives to be happier people?

to help us in our lives, to be happier people. Well, in one survey, many folks said that having a lucid dream helped them when they were feeling depressed or low. One person said that after a lucid dream, they could have this happy and beautiful experience that would stay with them for days. Another said, quote, it can kickstart your day and keep you warm. And a small study found that the day after people had lucid dreams, on average, they felt less stressed.

But be warned, if you're waking yourself up in the middle of the night to try lucid dreaming, we know that messing with your sleep can be bad for your mental health. Just remember Blythe. Inside my head, I am just like... And curiously, some researchers actually found a link between being depressed and having more lucid dreams. We're not sure why. And just quickly, the last thing we want to look into is whether lucid dreaming can help people who have horrendous nightmares.

Which, if this happens to you regularly, it can be awful, making you anxious, having difficulty sleeping. And so there's been this idea for a while now that if you can have a lucid dream... It's like, of course, yeah, with a lucid dream, if you have a nightmare, you can do things, change it or transform it. Brigitte Holtzinger is a psychologist at the Medical University of Vienna, and she has studied this herself. She's recruited people who were having terrible nightmares about being assaulted, run over by a train, hunted by a monster.

She'd teach them how to lucid dream. And she told me that it really did help some of her patients. Some woke themselves up, others would turn around and face the monster. There was one person who used to have these really frightening dreams of being chased where they had to escape. But after learning to lucid dream, they told Gita... Now that I know that I'm dreaming,

I would be stupid if I would stop this or change it. It's much better than every James Bond movie I've ever seen. Oh, wow! Now they could have fun with it. Now there's true realisation it's just a dream. Yeah, that was all very impressive and wonderful. But unfortunately, the evidence that lucid dreaming can help loads of people conquer their nightmares, it isn't so impressive and wonderful.

We now have several rather small studies, including Gita's, and there's a new one that's been making headlines, that show that after getting people to try lucid dreaming, they do report fewer nightmares. But these studies combine lucid dreaming with intensive therapy, and it's really hard to tease out what's doing the heavy lifting here. Plus, surveys find that even when people become lucid in their nightmares, they often can't change what's happening. So they'll be stuck in this terrifying dream.

And just knowing this is a dream, it's not real, that isn't necessarily that helpful. In fact, in a survey including more than 30 US veterans with PTSD who could lucid dream, only three said that they felt relieved to know that they'd been dreaming. Many just felt anxious about it. So even this superpower has its kryptonite, its limitations. But despite that, just like Superman, I still wanted to fly. I switched up the lucid dreaming method a little bit just so I could

sleep better, but kept trying. And still, the closest I'd gotten is realizing that I'm in a dream, but then getting too excited and waking up before I could do anything. I talked to Gita about it, who gave me one final piece of advice. Almost everybody experiences that. You get so exhilarated. Oh my God, this is now happening. And you get up, you wake up. Exactly, exactly.

Yes, I know. Of course, I had those as well. To me, it is like learning how to skate. You have to get your balance. Eventually, you will be able to keep that balance and ride that wave. Just be patient and persistent. Alright. But it'll happen if you keep doing it.

Blythe, Rose, it's the end of the episode everyone say yay if you had a lucid dream one two three Yay! Really? Wow, it worked. You did? I had one. Oh my God, Wendy. What? I know. I did it.

I did it. Oh my God. Do you want to hear the voice message I made straight after? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I just had a lucid dream. I just did it. I just did it.

I just did it. I was just having a nap and I just did it. I just did it. I just did it. I was just having a nap and I just went to sleep. And in the dream, I was lying on my bed and my entire ponytail came off. And I was looking at it going, oh, and I was like, no, wait, this is a dream. looking at it going oh and I was like no wait this is a dream ponytails don't just pop off this is a dream this is a dream this is a dream and then I put the ponytail down on the bed and I just felt it like how everyone says you just feel because feel things feel so real and it did and it did and it did and it felt. And it felt, it felt like my hair. It felt like my hair.

All the little strands. All the little, the little bits of hair. It felt like that. It felt like that. I did it. Aw. How did you feel when you woke up? It felt awesome.

It felt awesome. I do love that the lopped-off ponytail was enough of the, like, unreality dream world. You know, like, it was the chopped-off ponytail was, like, weird enough. Yeah, not taking your laptop into a cave on the beach. That was par for the course. But a haircut? That would never happen. That's Science Versus. This episode has 99 citations.

So if you want to read more about the science of lucid dreaming, then you just need to go to our show notes and click on our transcript. And there's a link and you'll see all that wonderful science there awaiting you. If you want to tell us about your lucid dreaming experiences, I would love to hear it. You can find us on Instagram. We're at science underscore BS. And I'm on TikTok at Wendy Zuckerman.

This episode has been produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horne, Joel Werner, and Akedi Foster-Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Sam Bear. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wiley, Peter Leonard and Emma Munger. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr Karen Concolly, Dr Benjamin Bard and Professor Ken Paller. Also, a big thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you are listening on Spotify, then follow us and tap the bell icon so you'll get notifications when new episodes come out. And if you like the show, please give us a five-star review. It really helps people find the show. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.