5 ms·

That's so 2014 Please also regard the methodological problems that are posed by the study http://neurocritic.blogspot.nl/2014/05/does-gamma-tacs-really-induce-

That's so 2014 Please also regard the methodological problems that are posed by the study http://neurocritic.blogspot.nl/2014/05/does-gamma-tacs-really-induce-lucid.html http://neurocritic.blogspot.nl/2014/05/does-gamma-tacs-reall... and that they only used 3 subjects. Furthermore they are not willing to share their data with other scientists. However, support comes from another group: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810013001098?via%3Dihub http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810013...

ElKrist 9y ago
I read 27 subjects participating to the study in the paper. Where did you see only three?
nonbel 9y ago
The first link is pretty much my impression. This looks like the usual trick of people playing games with definitions (lucid dreams is such and such score on our "LuCiD" scale). The main part of the trick is to measure something that sounds similar to what people actually care about, then draw conclusions about that thing cared about. By definition a person knows when they are having a lucid dream or not. If you will not trust their self report of that info there is no reason to trust anything else they report about the dream either. This scale is pointless for the purpose of identifying lucid dreaming. Where is the result: "% of trials that the person reports lucid dreaming"? Perhaps that is in supplementary figure 1 where they show "Nb. of dreams rated as lucid"? But what does it mean to "rate as lucid"? For this paper I see this is based on the scale: "Lucidity was assumed when subjects reported elevated ratings (>mean + 2 s.e.) on either or both of the LuCiD scale factors insight and dissociation." Going back to their earlier paper about creating the LuCiD scale all I find is this: "Dreams were treated as lucid dreams if they were rated as such by the participants." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220345 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220345
- derefr 9y ago
  > By definition a person knows when they are having a lucid dream or not. Do they? I mean, the qualia of "I'm having a lucid dream" might not have 100% overlap with the fact of having a lucid dream. Certain drugs can give people something they will describe as "a feeling of being very sure about things" without that feeling having any particular referent—whatever they think about, they tend to describe experiencing an "epiphany" about. (The subset of people who think tend to frame things through a lens of religious faith tend to describe this drug experience as a "religious experience", a "contact with the divine." Mostly, it seems, because they direct their attention to their religious beliefs, and end up having a feeling of sureness about those, while other trippy things are happening.) I wouldn't find it hard to believe that there is a thing you can do to the brain that makes it believe you are in conscious control of affecting the world you are sensorily experiencing. By itself, this would just make you experience dreaming as normal, but with a sensation that whatever you're doing in the dream—and however the dream is proceeding—it was your choice for you to do those things, and for the dream to proceed in that fashion. Without actual control of the dream, this would likely cause ego-dystonic thoughts: questioning why you directed the dream to go the way it did, because it seems so out-of-line with your normal waking desires.
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    Good luck proving that conscious will has any effect on the world whether waking or sleeping. People report that it does, and that's all we are sure about.
    - derefr 9y ago
      I wasn't really talking about "free will" or anything so airy; more about 1. your predictive model of your own behavior lining up with your actual behaviour; and 2. your predictive model of the causal effects of your behavior lining up with the actual observed world. In dreams, neither of these are true: "you" don't behave the way you'd expect of your waking self, and the things "you" do don't result in what you'd expect out of the real world.
      - 9y ago
asifjamil 9y ago
See the paper again (the methods are at the end of the paper). They reported 27 subjects.

ElKrist 9y ago

I read 27 subjects participating to the study in the paper. Where did you see only three?

nonbel 9y ago

The first link is pretty much my impression. This looks like the usual trick of people playing games with definitions (lucid dreams is such and such score on our "LuCiD" scale). The main part of the trick is to measure something that sounds similar to what people actually care about, then draw conclusions about that thing cared about. By definition a person knows when they are having a lucid dream or not. If you will not trust their self report of that info there is no reason to trust anything else they report about the dream either. This scale is pointless for the purpose of identifying lucid dreaming. Where is the result: "% of trials that the person reports lucid dreaming"? Perhaps that is in supplementary figure 1 where they show "Nb. of dreams rated as lucid"? But what does it mean to "rate as lucid"? For this paper I see this is based on the scale: "Lucidity was assumed when subjects reported elevated ratings (>mean + 2 s.e.) on either or both of the LuCiD scale factors insight and dissociation." Going back to their earlier paper about creating the LuCiD scale all I find is this: "Dreams were treated as lucid dreams if they were rated as such by the participants." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220345 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220345

derefr 9y ago
> By definition a person knows when they are having a lucid dream or not. Do they? I mean, the qualia of "I'm having a lucid dream" might not have 100% overlap with the fact of having a lucid dream. Certain drugs can give people something they will describe as "a feeling of being very sure about things" without that feeling having any particular referent—whatever they think about, they tend to describe experiencing an "epiphany" about. (The subset of people who think tend to frame things through a lens of religious faith tend to describe this drug experience as a "religious experience", a "contact with the divine." Mostly, it seems, because they direct their attention to their religious beliefs, and end up having a feeling of sureness about those, while other trippy things are happening.) I wouldn't find it hard to believe that there is a thing you can do to the brain that makes it believe you are in conscious control of affecting the world you are sensorily experiencing. By itself, this would just make you experience dreaming as normal, but with a sensation that whatever you're doing in the dream—and however the dream is proceeding—it was your choice for you to do those things, and for the dream to proceed in that fashion. Without actual control of the dream, this would likely cause ego-dystonic thoughts: questioning why you directed the dream to go the way it did, because it seems so out-of-line with your normal waking desires.
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  Good luck proving that conscious will has any effect on the world whether waking or sleeping. People report that it does, and that's all we are sure about.
  - derefr 9y ago
    I wasn't really talking about "free will" or anything so airy; more about 1. your predictive model of your own behavior lining up with your actual behaviour; and 2. your predictive model of the causal effects of your behavior lining up with the actual observed world. In dreams, neither of these are true: "you" don't behave the way you'd expect of your waking self, and the things "you" do don't result in what you'd expect out of the real world.
    - 9y ago

asifjamil 9y ago

See the paper again (the methods are at the end of the paper). They reported 27 subjects.