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Gamma Wave Brain Zaps Induce Lucid Dreaming

77 points by adammichaelc 12y ago

xarball 12y ago
Can I give. Money. To have that? -The internet.
argumentum 12y ago
Up till my early 20s, I used to lucid dream so much, I thought it was the normal state of dreaming (for everyone). Over the last few years the frequency has declined to maybe a couple times a month. Of course, you never know how much you'd miss a thing until its gone. In this case, I didn't even know it was a thing before it started fading away. I'd certainly let my brain be zapped to get this superpower back.
- aymeric 12y ago
  I used to dream and lucid dream a lot. My email signature was "Traveller by day and dreamer by night, or the other way around, I don't remember." I have lost it and it is something I would like to get back.
  - letney 12y ago
    I too experienced a plethora of lucid dreaming through my early twenties. Sometimes I would have a few a night for weeks. They tapered off gradually and I have maybe a few a year now (I'm 35). Many were tied with sleep paralysis, which didn't give me the fear that most people associate with it. Sometimes I could extract my preceptual self from my body and experience walking around the room in a weird lucid dream world. All while simultaneously being aware of my pysical body lying in bed. I would love to have those dreams again.
    - argumentum 12y ago
      Wow, so similar. My first lucid dreams were initiated during sleep paralysis. Initially, these episodes were absolutely terrifying (i felt like I was suffocating). Lucid dreaming cured me of this fear .. once I realize i'm in a dream I can change the scenario to something more pleasant. Or just fly away through the window ;) I feel sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming are deeply linked phenomena.
      - robhack 12y ago
        I never had any lucid dream unfortunately, but this link has already been looked at, notably here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgJOMqIhvHM&list=PLC2DC804CF8259443&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgJOMqIhvHM&list=PLC2DC804CF...
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  What's your sleep cycle like? Do you tend to fall asleep out of utter exhaustion, or do you tend to give yourself a reasonable bedtime and wind down period. I've found that I dream lucidly a lot less when I've let my sleep hygene go to crap. As an aside, because of being a naturally lucid dreamer, nightmares confuse me and on the rare event I have them -- once or twice a decade -- they freak me out a lot more. That absolute loss of control of one's subconscious mind is near unfathomable to me. I can remember being six or seven and my sister telling me about a nightmare she had and me being absolutely confused about them; the thoughts of being injured in a dream was just something that happened in movies.
  - argumentum 12y ago
    Interesting .. I tend to "become" lucid in the middle of a non-lucid dream (nightmare or otherwise). Rarely will I be lucid from the get go. So when I gain "control", the initial scenario is set. Sometimes, it's quite a fascinating "twist" on recent real-life events. Other times it's Alice and the Wonderland style craziness. Often I think I'm in a partially Lucid dream. I know I'm dreaming, I can mostly do what I want (including completely changing the scenario) but I am also not in control of everything that happens, particularly what characters appear or what they say/do in response to me. It's a bit like living in an alternative universe. The strangest aspect is how realistic the characters are, particularly the real-life people. I'll be talking to a friend, and get a conversation that is so like that person that I'll often forget that it was said in a dream. This has led to some strange real-life conversations, lol.
  - olalonde 12y ago
    Opposite experience here. The only times I've experienced lucid dreaming was when I was exhausted in a noisy/sunny environment.
te_platt 12y ago
Note: gamma wave, not gamma particles. Gamma wave refers to an aspect of brain activity. Maybe I'm the only one who was confused by the title but I feel better knowing people aren't being irradiated for the experiment.
- md224 12y ago
  Yeah, that threw me off as well. For anyone interested in actual brain lasers: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00036/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00...
- chockablock 12y ago
  Yep: 'Gamma' is just a name given by convention to a frequency range of interest (here 30-40Hz; Gamma can be used to refer to frequencies from 30-100Hz, depending on the species and brain area being studied.)
orthecreedence 12y ago
Lucid dreaming is one of the coolest things we can do. People think that dreams aren't real, but that's far from the truth. They aren't real in the sense that if I find a COOL WATCH or I win $2000 in a dream I can't take it with me to "real life," but when you think about what our life really is, it's a collection of experiences...not accumulation of physical objects. In dreams you can have the same experiences you have in waking life but even more so. You can take these experiences with you when you are done dreaming. Lucid dreaming takes this even further. You can imagine a problem you have is a tangible object (a bug or something) in your dream and squish it. Although this seems purely symbolic, you can take the feeling of having dealt with a problem into waking life, which will give you more energy to do the same in your interactions with waking life. Not to mention in lucid dreams you can fly everywhere you want to go, you can have sex with whoever you want however you want, you can be a bear or a toad or a tree, you can be three of yourself at the same time, you can slow down time, you can travel to the bottom of the ocean and you can see distant planets or the inside of a star. Is it real? Yes, because you are actually having these experiences, even if you are the only one having them.
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  This was very nice to see written down. Thank you for that. No doubt as LD becomes more and more popular we're going to see a lot of questionable info on the subject. Some people are terrified of these experiences, perhaps with their own 'demons' to deal with. Others, many others, consider it one of the grooviest gifts imaginable :) It's a unique thing, individual, but as it gets more known - we're going to see people trying to fit it into a simple box (as we always do) - and nothing useful will come of that. Re: Gamma waves, hmm - yeah, isn't that like reading a frequency coming off a CRT and then trying to retransmit that frequency back to derive the original image? You need a serious understanding of the device to be able to do that. Perhaps it might be able to help 'induce' the state with the individual's help - maybe.
asd 12y ago
If you want lucid dreaming without having to wait for a Gamma Wave Zapper, there is one alternative. Sertraline (Zoloft). I've been on and off of it a few times in the past 10 years for anxiety. After a few weeks of being on it, the lucid dreaming kicks in. Sometimes I wish I could record these dreams and make them into movies. It's quite the experience.
- goblin89 12y ago
  I've read somewhere about curious practice of writing down everything you can remember from the dream immediately after waking up (to facilitate the recall keeping your eyes closed was recommended, I think). Maybe you should try that and see what comes out of it!
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  Or you could practice any one of the many natural techniques which many of us use daily. The drugs and gamma waves are unnecessary. http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/52-ways-to-have-lucid-dreams.html http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/52-ways-to-have-lucid... I know it's not a 'quick fix' - but (no offence intended, just IMHO) it feels rather disrespectful to randomly flood the brain with chemicals to make it 'perform.' The chemistry in there is extremely complex, I am terrified to mess around with it. Much the same way I wouldn't dive into a complex dev project randomly changing methods, unless I knew the larger scope.
  - nemo1618 12y ago
    I wouldn't scorn such "shortcuts." It's difficult for people to put sustained effort into something without having some sense of what the payoff will be like. "Cheating" once or twice can provide sufficient motivation for developing the skill permanently. Psychedelic drugs, for example, can provide a flash of mystical enlightenment that motivates people to begin meditating.
    - hitchhiker999 12y ago
      At no point did I scorn such "shortcuts" - read what I wrote without the assumption that I'm anti-drugs. I wanted to point out that you're playing with complex chemistry, and something as strong as sertraline chloride is a serious choice. Also sertraline chloride vs something like (as an example) DMT - are very much not the same thing. DMT being a natural, powerful psychedelic used for many years in many forms by many cultures. I wouldn't compare mushrooms to Zolpidem either, though the effects are similar. One is not like the other. Zolpidem (branded as stilnox at the time) gave me very similar effects, I basically had a ??real-life lucid dream?? within 20 mins of taking it. I stopped immediately. Either way, to each his/her own - I merely wanted to offer a different perspective. If it works for you, go for it.
seanv 12y ago
sign me up!
gwern 12y ago
>> If I understand correctly, the participants rated their experience of these three factors on a scale of 0 (strongly disagree that I had such an experience) to 5 (strongly agree). Now if we look to see the scores they gave for how much dream insight, dissociation and control they had, we find that the averages for the gamma stimulation condition are around 0.6, 1.3, and 0.5 respectively. > > That’s a pretty low score, even if it’s higher than it would’ve been without the brain stimulation. Maybe, maybe not. Averages work for some things, not so much for others. Suppose 4-5 are no-fooling-definitely-lucid dreams, and 1-3 are questionable. If the average is being driven by a few dreams falling into '5' and otherwise scores are unchanged, you'd get a worthwhile effect but only a small shift in average on your 1-5 scale. I'd want to read http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Voss-et-al-2013_Measuring-Consciousness-in-Dreams.pdf http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/... more carefully looking at how the overall rating distribution looks split by condition and whether the rating scale is masking a binary effect.
- gone35 12y ago
  Yes yes, you are definitely onto something here. Awfully, the standard deviations of almost every item in their validation study [1, Table 1] is greater than the means --in some cases even twice as big--, which themselves are very low (the majority are below 2, and several are below 1). This is, at a minimum, strongly indicative of bimodality --which would make sense since, among other things, participants were drawn mostly from Bonn University's lucid dreaming student club [p.11]. As a matter of fact, they report they threw away two data sets (!) precisely because of "extreme answering style (all items were scored as 0 or 5)" [ibid]. Why they didn't heed these warning signs (and at the very least use medians instead of means from then on) is beyond me. [1] http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Voss-et-al-2013_Measuring-Consciousness-in-Dreams.pdf http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/...
mcphilip 12y ago
I first read about lucid dreaming 20 years ago when I was twelve. It was treated more as a new age fringe thing back then, but I had a blast experimenting with it. My favorite dreamscape involved a purely abstract state of mind where I could symbolically visualize components of algorithms -- nearly all of my work writing motion detection algorithms that worked in complex outdoor scenarios was refined in my sleep. That being said, I eventually "gave up" lucid dreaming after 10 years or so. At a gut level it felt like sleep and dreams are best left to the subconscious -- a neural defrag, if you will. Personally I feel much more rested now that I make no effort to remember, much less control, my dreams.
- pagliara 12y ago
  That's fascinating. Kind of makes me want to practice lucid dreaming now. Makes a lot of sense though, with regards to how rested you felt after giving up lucid dreaming. Writing complex algorithms in your dreams does not sound restful.
  - hitchhiker999 12y ago
    We know very very little about what the mind is capable of, or which parts of it require the sleep process, or even how the sleep process is affected by a lucid dream state. We just don't know, my experience is completely different (than the OPs). That person's experience could be a result of pre-conceived notions about 'effort vs reward', or any other number of intersecting belief systems. Who knows? It is unique to everyone, and can be learnt in weeks or years depending on who you are (unless you are comfortable inducing it with gamma waves) Do not rely on anecdotal evidence from others, only trust your own experience in matters that relate to the inner workings of your life. Find out for yourself if it's useful or not. ... it's, at the very least, an interesting adventure.
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  I also practice LD (started at age 10-ish, now 38) but can't agree with your 'gut level' feeling. I feel it's what we are meant to be doing, rather than regular dreaming. I am more rested, and more awake the next day. It continues to enrich my life in many ways. But yes, it's just another arbitrary choice, we're both going by 'gut' instinct. in my first LD at 10, i built a go-kart from tools I created on the wall (where the school black-board was), and then flew out of the window on it - Pretty much a win for a 10 yr old.
stefan_kendall3 12y ago
I find normal dreaming much more fun. It's like playing Stanley Parable for the first time, instead of of opening Garry's Mod...alone. I'll pick a Stanley Parable any day over Garry's Mod.
- bornabox 12y ago
  Thanks for the Tip on Stanley's Parable, never heard of it. Sounds very interesting, will try the demo now. Thanks.
gfodor 12y ago
As a graphics nerd, the handful of times I've had genuine lucid dreaming (when experimenting with it in college) was incredible. In the dream I would would focus on taking in the behavior of light and texture on surfaces and trying to gauge its quality from a computer graphics perspective, and always found the 'simulation' absolutely stunning. I remember encountering a large rabbit once and ran my fingers through it's fur and it felt and looked real. It's mindboggling how well the brain can simulate a fake environment when you go lucid, it's really beyond comprehension to me how it's able to do so. The brain can basically simulate the rendering equation in real time (or trick yourself into thinking it is, which is the same thing really.)
- doorhammer 12y ago
  > The brain can basically simulate the rendering equation in real time (or trick yourself into thinking it is, which is the same thing really.) I always wonder about this. It occurs to me that it may seem to perfectly real because the brain is able to reproduce all, or close to all, of the features it would use to try to classify that object in real life, which would lead to it seeming like a 100% match, or 100% real. I guess you could think of it as passing a dataset back into a machine learning algorithm that was just trained using that dataset. It also makes me wonder what would happen if you try to conjure a specific animal or place that you know a little about, but are fuzzy details. Would you brain feel like "yup. this is the thing because it's absolutely everything I know about the thing; it's perfect" or would it have problems? Of course, I'm not an expert in brains or machine learning, so this is just my wild speculation on my thought.
  - gfodor 12y ago
    One of the freakiest lucid dreaming experiences I had was when I had a conversation in my lucid dream with a friend of mine while I was completely aware that it was a dream. We were having a conversation about how my mind was controlling what they said but yet it felt like a completely normal conversation, where I had no way to predict exactly what they were going to reply with. Bizarre.
- gulpahum 12y ago
DAddYE 12y ago
Since I was 10 I do lucid dreams. There are days that I struggle half a day to be 100% sure I'm awake and the other half to assimilate it. For me this is really exhausting for three reasons: 1. the brain needs to properly sleep 2. they are so rich of details 3. they condense in 7/8 hours maybe 5/10 years of life Basically they are what I think is a kind of parallel universe. I'm used to tell the entire "dream" to my GF. She always been astonished by them. They seems absolutely unrelated to anything I saw hear etc... during the day, they are in some case "boring" in the sense that I'm dreaming me in a totally different life, job etc... nothing "exciting" or "strange".
- politician 12y ago
  Your brain can only generate so much pseudorandom visual imagery per second; an effect that you can exploit to control how much and whether you're lucid dreaming. For example, if you fly up while looking down eventually you'll overwhelm your ability to generate a detailed geography and wake up. Or at least, that's how I manipulate my LD state.
learc83 12y ago
The half a dozen or so times I can remember lucid dreaming I always try to fly. The only problem is that I start floating and can't control it and I start tumbling--it feels exactly like the point when you're tipping back in your chair and you realize you're going to fall.
darkmighty 12y ago
I wonder if staring at 40Hz refresh rate screens could produce a similar effect? I have a screen with a flickering backlight at a frequency just outside perception. If I use it for prolonged periods before bed, I can perceive a 'flickering afterglow' for minutes while trying to sleep.
- kaybe 12y ago
  I think that's like playing tetris or 2048 for too long. (Depending on how long one played, there are overlays of the game in normal vision for quite a while. Or your brain is trying to do the pattern matching of the game to normal objects. (I've seen reports that people's brains were trying to combine cars of the same colour for example.))
joshontheweb 12y ago
I recently had a lucid dream for the first time. Really interesting experience. It was triggered by the fact that I plunged to a city at the bottom of the ocean and could still breath. I realized this was impossible and became lucid. I decided to try and have some fun with it so I 'willed' myself to have a gun. It worked, kind of. I had something in my hand that i could shoot with but it was sort of undefined. Kind of like if you are playing a 3d fps and the texture for your gun doesn't load properly. It was kind of amorphous and brown and glitchy. I suspect because I don't know a ton about guns and i didn't really specify what kind of gun or anything. Perhaps next time ill imagine an ak47 and see if I get more definition. I played around shooting things for awhile but it was draining to keep control so I gave up and became batman, was knocked off a bridge, and broke my back on a cement pillar. I woke up screaming "You just killed Batman!".
wturner 12y ago
I had my first lucid dream when I was 16 years old. About 10 years ago I had a dream that I can only express as a self induced DMT experience. It happened during a time where I was in an extreme amount of "outside of myself" anxiety. I didn't know what DMT was at the time and only drew parallels after the fact from listening to interviews and reading a book on the subject. Since then I've had a few lucid dreams where I'm right on the verge of 'ripping open the universe' in DMT-speak. Anyway, it was life changing to say the least so I enjoy articles like these.
hdivider 12y ago
Highly interesting effect, but note that the extent of lucid dreaming here is (self-) reported to be rather low: "Despite the robust methodology, I think these headlines are getting carried away. Here’s why. Lucid dreaming was defined by higher scores in participants’ feelings of insight (knowing that they were dreaming); dissociation (taking a third person perspective); and control (being able to shape events). I looked up the paper where the researchers first described their scale for measuring these factors. If I understand correctly, the participants rated their experience of these three factors on a scale of 0 (strongly disagree that I had such an experience) to 5 (strongly agree). Now if we look to see the scores they gave for how much dream insight, dissociation and control they had, we find that the averages for the gamma stimulation condition are around 0.6, 1.3, and 0.5 respectively."
jere 12y ago
>The sweet spot was 40 Hertz. Zapping sleeping volunteers at this frequency, part of the so-called gamma wave band, led their brains to produce brain waves of the same frequency, the researchers found, which triggered lucidity 77 percent of the time, as determined by self-reports from the dreamers after they were awoken. >Now if we look to see the scores they gave for how much dream insight, dissociation and control they had, we find that the averages for the gamma stimulation condition are around 0.6, 1.3, and 0.5 respectively. I don't understand. A score of 0.6 for insight means, at best, 40% strongly disagreed that they knew they were dreaming and 60% perhaps moderately disagreed (score=1). Some higher scores for the successes would result in even more than 40% strongly disagreeing that they knew they were awake. I could see it having an effect for a small number of people, but how does that translate into "triggered lucidity 77 percent of the time."
rsaarelm 12y ago
People are already making DIY transcranial direct current stimulation gadgets for themselves. The setup apparently isn't much more complicated than a regular battery and two electrodes taped to your scalp. Someone at Reddit also seems to be working on making a consumer device for the lucid dreaming thing: http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/25aos9/published_in_nature_neuroscience_today_lucid/ http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/25aos9/publis...

77 points by adammichaelc 12y ago

Can I give. Money. To have that? -The internet.

Up till my early 20s, I used to lucid dream so much, I thought it was the normal state of dreaming (for everyone). Over the last few years the frequency has declined to maybe a couple times a month. Of course, you never know how much you'd miss a thing until its gone. In this case, I didn't even know it was a thing before it started fading away. I'd certainly let my brain be zapped to get this superpower back.

aymeric 12y ago
I used to dream and lucid dream a lot. My email signature was "Traveller by day and dreamer by night, or the other way around, I don't remember." I have lost it and it is something I would like to get back.
- letney 12y ago
  I too experienced a plethora of lucid dreaming through my early twenties. Sometimes I would have a few a night for weeks. They tapered off gradually and I have maybe a few a year now (I'm 35). Many were tied with sleep paralysis, which didn't give me the fear that most people associate with it. Sometimes I could extract my preceptual self from my body and experience walking around the room in a weird lucid dream world. All while simultaneously being aware of my pysical body lying in bed. I would love to have those dreams again.
  - argumentum 12y ago
    Wow, so similar. My first lucid dreams were initiated during sleep paralysis. Initially, these episodes were absolutely terrifying (i felt like I was suffocating). Lucid dreaming cured me of this fear .. once I realize i'm in a dream I can change the scenario to something more pleasant. Or just fly away through the window ;) I feel sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming are deeply linked phenomena.
    - robhack 12y ago
      I never had any lucid dream unfortunately, but this link has already been looked at, notably here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgJOMqIhvHM&list=PLC2DC804CF8259443&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgJOMqIhvHM&list=PLC2DC804CF...
Sanddancer 12y ago
What's your sleep cycle like? Do you tend to fall asleep out of utter exhaustion, or do you tend to give yourself a reasonable bedtime and wind down period. I've found that I dream lucidly a lot less when I've let my sleep hygene go to crap. As an aside, because of being a naturally lucid dreamer, nightmares confuse me and on the rare event I have them -- once or twice a decade -- they freak me out a lot more. That absolute loss of control of one's subconscious mind is near unfathomable to me. I can remember being six or seven and my sister telling me about a nightmare she had and me being absolutely confused about them; the thoughts of being injured in a dream was just something that happened in movies.
- argumentum 12y ago
  Interesting .. I tend to "become" lucid in the middle of a non-lucid dream (nightmare or otherwise). Rarely will I be lucid from the get go. So when I gain "control", the initial scenario is set. Sometimes, it's quite a fascinating "twist" on recent real-life events. Other times it's Alice and the Wonderland style craziness. Often I think I'm in a partially Lucid dream. I know I'm dreaming, I can mostly do what I want (including completely changing the scenario) but I am also not in control of everything that happens, particularly what characters appear or what they say/do in response to me. It's a bit like living in an alternative universe. The strangest aspect is how realistic the characters are, particularly the real-life people. I'll be talking to a friend, and get a conversation that is so like that person that I'll often forget that it was said in a dream. This has led to some strange real-life conversations, lol.
- olalonde 12y ago
  Opposite experience here. The only times I've experienced lucid dreaming was when I was exhausted in a noisy/sunny environment.

te_platt 12y ago

Note: gamma wave, not gamma particles. Gamma wave refers to an aspect of brain activity. Maybe I'm the only one who was confused by the title but I feel better knowing people aren't being irradiated for the experiment.

md224 12y ago
Yeah, that threw me off as well. For anyone interested in actual brain lasers: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00036/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00...
chockablock 12y ago
Yep: 'Gamma' is just a name given by convention to a frequency range of interest (here 30-40Hz; Gamma can be used to refer to frequencies from 30-100Hz, depending on the species and brain area being studied.)

orthecreedence 12y ago

Lucid dreaming is one of the coolest things we can do. People think that dreams aren't real, but that's far from the truth. They aren't real in the sense that if I find a COOL WATCH or I win $2000 in a dream I can't take it with me to "real life," but when you think about what our life really is, it's a collection of experiences...not accumulation of physical objects. In dreams you can have the same experiences you have in waking life but even more so. You can take these experiences with you when you are done dreaming. Lucid dreaming takes this even further. You can imagine a problem you have is a tangible object (a bug or something) in your dream and squish it. Although this seems purely symbolic, you can take the feeling of having dealt with a problem into waking life, which will give you more energy to do the same in your interactions with waking life. Not to mention in lucid dreams you can fly everywhere you want to go, you can have sex with whoever you want however you want, you can be a bear or a toad or a tree, you can be three of yourself at the same time, you can slow down time, you can travel to the bottom of the ocean and you can see distant planets or the inside of a star. Is it real? Yes, because you are actually having these experiences, even if you are the only one having them.

hitchhiker999 12y ago
This was very nice to see written down. Thank you for that. No doubt as LD becomes more and more popular we're going to see a lot of questionable info on the subject. Some people are terrified of these experiences, perhaps with their own 'demons' to deal with. Others, many others, consider it one of the grooviest gifts imaginable :) It's a unique thing, individual, but as it gets more known - we're going to see people trying to fit it into a simple box (as we always do) - and nothing useful will come of that. Re: Gamma waves, hmm - yeah, isn't that like reading a frequency coming off a CRT and then trying to retransmit that frequency back to derive the original image? You need a serious understanding of the device to be able to do that. Perhaps it might be able to help 'induce' the state with the individual's help - maybe.

asd 12y ago

If you want lucid dreaming without having to wait for a Gamma Wave Zapper, there is one alternative. Sertraline (Zoloft). I've been on and off of it a few times in the past 10 years for anxiety. After a few weeks of being on it, the lucid dreaming kicks in. Sometimes I wish I could record these dreams and make them into movies. It's quite the experience.

goblin89 12y ago
I've read somewhere about curious practice of writing down everything you can remember from the dream immediately after waking up (to facilitate the recall keeping your eyes closed was recommended, I think). Maybe you should try that and see what comes out of it!
hitchhiker999 12y ago
Or you could practice any one of the many natural techniques which many of us use daily. The drugs and gamma waves are unnecessary. http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/52-ways-to-have-lucid-dreams.html http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/52-ways-to-have-lucid... I know it's not a 'quick fix' - but (no offence intended, just IMHO) it feels rather disrespectful to randomly flood the brain with chemicals to make it 'perform.' The chemistry in there is extremely complex, I am terrified to mess around with it. Much the same way I wouldn't dive into a complex dev project randomly changing methods, unless I knew the larger scope.
- nemo1618 12y ago
  I wouldn't scorn such "shortcuts." It's difficult for people to put sustained effort into something without having some sense of what the payoff will be like. "Cheating" once or twice can provide sufficient motivation for developing the skill permanently. Psychedelic drugs, for example, can provide a flash of mystical enlightenment that motivates people to begin meditating.
  - hitchhiker999 12y ago
    At no point did I scorn such "shortcuts" - read what I wrote without the assumption that I'm anti-drugs. I wanted to point out that you're playing with complex chemistry, and something as strong as sertraline chloride is a serious choice. Also sertraline chloride vs something like (as an example) DMT - are very much not the same thing. DMT being a natural, powerful psychedelic used for many years in many forms by many cultures. I wouldn't compare mushrooms to Zolpidem either, though the effects are similar. One is not like the other. Zolpidem (branded as stilnox at the time) gave me very similar effects, I basically had a ??real-life lucid dream?? within 20 mins of taking it. I stopped immediately. Either way, to each his/her own - I merely wanted to offer a different perspective. If it works for you, go for it.

seanv 12y ago

sign me up!

gwern 12y ago

>> If I understand correctly, the participants rated their experience of these three factors on a scale of 0 (strongly disagree that I had such an experience) to 5 (strongly agree). Now if we look to see the scores they gave for how much dream insight, dissociation and control they had, we find that the averages for the gamma stimulation condition are around 0.6, 1.3, and 0.5 respectively. > > That’s a pretty low score, even if it’s higher than it would’ve been without the brain stimulation. Maybe, maybe not. Averages work for some things, not so much for others. Suppose 4-5 are no-fooling-definitely-lucid dreams, and 1-3 are questionable. If the average is being driven by a few dreams falling into '5' and otherwise scores are unchanged, you'd get a worthwhile effect but only a small shift in average on your 1-5 scale. I'd want to read http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Voss-et-al-2013_Measuring-Consciousness-in-Dreams.pdf http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/... more carefully looking at how the overall rating distribution looks split by condition and whether the rating scale is masking a binary effect.

gone35 12y ago
Yes yes, you are definitely onto something here. Awfully, the standard deviations of almost every item in their validation study [1, Table 1] is greater than the means --in some cases even twice as big--, which themselves are very low (the majority are below 2, and several are below 1). This is, at a minimum, strongly indicative of bimodality --which would make sense since, among other things, participants were drawn mostly from Bonn University's lucid dreaming student club [p.11]. As a matter of fact, they report they threw away two data sets (!) precisely because of "extreme answering style (all items were scored as 0 or 5)" [ibid]. Why they didn't heed these warning signs (and at the very least use medians instead of means from then on) is beyond me. [1] http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Voss-et-al-2013_Measuring-Consciousness-in-Dreams.pdf http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/...

mcphilip 12y ago

I first read about lucid dreaming 20 years ago when I was twelve. It was treated more as a new age fringe thing back then, but I had a blast experimenting with it. My favorite dreamscape involved a purely abstract state of mind where I could symbolically visualize components of algorithms -- nearly all of my work writing motion detection algorithms that worked in complex outdoor scenarios was refined in my sleep. That being said, I eventually "gave up" lucid dreaming after 10 years or so. At a gut level it felt like sleep and dreams are best left to the subconscious -- a neural defrag, if you will. Personally I feel much more rested now that I make no effort to remember, much less control, my dreams.

pagliara 12y ago
That's fascinating. Kind of makes me want to practice lucid dreaming now. Makes a lot of sense though, with regards to how rested you felt after giving up lucid dreaming. Writing complex algorithms in your dreams does not sound restful.
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  We know very very little about what the mind is capable of, or which parts of it require the sleep process, or even how the sleep process is affected by a lucid dream state. We just don't know, my experience is completely different (than the OPs). That person's experience could be a result of pre-conceived notions about 'effort vs reward', or any other number of intersecting belief systems. Who knows? It is unique to everyone, and can be learnt in weeks or years depending on who you are (unless you are comfortable inducing it with gamma waves) Do not rely on anecdotal evidence from others, only trust your own experience in matters that relate to the inner workings of your life. Find out for yourself if it's useful or not. ... it's, at the very least, an interesting adventure.
hitchhiker999 12y ago
I also practice LD (started at age 10-ish, now 38) but can't agree with your 'gut level' feeling. I feel it's what we are meant to be doing, rather than regular dreaming. I am more rested, and more awake the next day. It continues to enrich my life in many ways. But yes, it's just another arbitrary choice, we're both going by 'gut' instinct. in my first LD at 10, i built a go-kart from tools I created on the wall (where the school black-board was), and then flew out of the window on it - Pretty much a win for a 10 yr old.

stefan_kendall3 12y ago

I find normal dreaming much more fun. It's like playing Stanley Parable for the first time, instead of of opening Garry's Mod...alone. I'll pick a Stanley Parable any day over Garry's Mod.

bornabox 12y ago
Thanks for the Tip on Stanley's Parable, never heard of it. Sounds very interesting, will try the demo now. Thanks.

gfodor 12y ago

As a graphics nerd, the handful of times I've had genuine lucid dreaming (when experimenting with it in college) was incredible. In the dream I would would focus on taking in the behavior of light and texture on surfaces and trying to gauge its quality from a computer graphics perspective, and always found the 'simulation' absolutely stunning. I remember encountering a large rabbit once and ran my fingers through it's fur and it felt and looked real. It's mindboggling how well the brain can simulate a fake environment when you go lucid, it's really beyond comprehension to me how it's able to do so. The brain can basically simulate the rendering equation in real time (or trick yourself into thinking it is, which is the same thing really.)

doorhammer 12y ago
> The brain can basically simulate the rendering equation in real time (or trick yourself into thinking it is, which is the same thing really.) I always wonder about this. It occurs to me that it may seem to perfectly real because the brain is able to reproduce all, or close to all, of the features it would use to try to classify that object in real life, which would lead to it seeming like a 100% match, or 100% real. I guess you could think of it as passing a dataset back into a machine learning algorithm that was just trained using that dataset. It also makes me wonder what would happen if you try to conjure a specific animal or place that you know a little about, but are fuzzy details. Would you brain feel like "yup. this is the thing because it's absolutely everything I know about the thing; it's perfect" or would it have problems? Of course, I'm not an expert in brains or machine learning, so this is just my wild speculation on my thought.
- gfodor 12y ago
  One of the freakiest lucid dreaming experiences I had was when I had a conversation in my lucid dream with a friend of mine while I was completely aware that it was a dream. We were having a conversation about how my mind was controlling what they said but yet it felt like a completely normal conversation, where I had no way to predict exactly what they were going to reply with. Bizarre.
gulpahum 12y ago

DAddYE 12y ago

Since I was 10 I do lucid dreams. There are days that I struggle half a day to be 100% sure I'm awake and the other half to assimilate it. For me this is really exhausting for three reasons: 1. the brain needs to properly sleep 2. they are so rich of details 3. they condense in 7/8 hours maybe 5/10 years of life Basically they are what I think is a kind of parallel universe. I'm used to tell the entire "dream" to my GF. She always been astonished by them. They seems absolutely unrelated to anything I saw hear etc... during the day, they are in some case "boring" in the sense that I'm dreaming me in a totally different life, job etc... nothing "exciting" or "strange".

politician 12y ago
Your brain can only generate so much pseudorandom visual imagery per second; an effect that you can exploit to control how much and whether you're lucid dreaming. For example, if you fly up while looking down eventually you'll overwhelm your ability to generate a detailed geography and wake up. Or at least, that's how I manipulate my LD state.

learc83 12y ago

The half a dozen or so times I can remember lucid dreaming I always try to fly. The only problem is that I start floating and can't control it and I start tumbling--it feels exactly like the point when you're tipping back in your chair and you realize you're going to fall.

darkmighty 12y ago

I wonder if staring at 40Hz refresh rate screens could produce a similar effect? I have a screen with a flickering backlight at a frequency just outside perception. If I use it for prolonged periods before bed, I can perceive a 'flickering afterglow' for minutes while trying to sleep.

kaybe 12y ago
I think that's like playing tetris or 2048 for too long. (Depending on how long one played, there are overlays of the game in normal vision for quite a while. Or your brain is trying to do the pattern matching of the game to normal objects. (I've seen reports that people's brains were trying to combine cars of the same colour for example.))

joshontheweb 12y ago

I recently had a lucid dream for the first time. Really interesting experience. It was triggered by the fact that I plunged to a city at the bottom of the ocean and could still breath. I realized this was impossible and became lucid. I decided to try and have some fun with it so I 'willed' myself to have a gun. It worked, kind of. I had something in my hand that i could shoot with but it was sort of undefined. Kind of like if you are playing a 3d fps and the texture for your gun doesn't load properly. It was kind of amorphous and brown and glitchy. I suspect because I don't know a ton about guns and i didn't really specify what kind of gun or anything. Perhaps next time ill imagine an ak47 and see if I get more definition. I played around shooting things for awhile but it was draining to keep control so I gave up and became batman, was knocked off a bridge, and broke my back on a cement pillar. I woke up screaming "You just killed Batman!".

wturner 12y ago

I had my first lucid dream when I was 16 years old. About 10 years ago I had a dream that I can only express as a self induced DMT experience. It happened during a time where I was in an extreme amount of "outside of myself" anxiety. I didn't know what DMT was at the time and only drew parallels after the fact from listening to interviews and reading a book on the subject. Since then I've had a few lucid dreams where I'm right on the verge of 'ripping open the universe' in DMT-speak. Anyway, it was life changing to say the least so I enjoy articles like these.

hdivider 12y ago

Highly interesting effect, but note that the extent of lucid dreaming here is (self-) reported to be rather low: "Despite the robust methodology, I think these headlines are getting carried away. Here’s why. Lucid dreaming was defined by higher scores in participants’ feelings of insight (knowing that they were dreaming); dissociation (taking a third person perspective); and control (being able to shape events). I looked up the paper where the researchers first described their scale for measuring these factors. If I understand correctly, the participants rated their experience of these three factors on a scale of 0 (strongly disagree that I had such an experience) to 5 (strongly agree). Now if we look to see the scores they gave for how much dream insight, dissociation and control they had, we find that the averages for the gamma stimulation condition are around 0.6, 1.3, and 0.5 respectively."

jere 12y ago

>The sweet spot was 40 Hertz. Zapping sleeping volunteers at this frequency, part of the so-called gamma wave band, led their brains to produce brain waves of the same frequency, the researchers found, which triggered lucidity 77 percent of the time, as determined by self-reports from the dreamers after they were awoken. >Now if we look to see the scores they gave for how much dream insight, dissociation and control they had, we find that the averages for the gamma stimulation condition are around 0.6, 1.3, and 0.5 respectively. I don't understand. A score of 0.6 for insight means, at best, 40% strongly disagreed that they knew they were dreaming and 60% perhaps moderately disagreed (score=1). Some higher scores for the successes would result in even more than 40% strongly disagreeing that they knew they were awake. I could see it having an effect for a small number of people, but how does that translate into "triggered lucidity 77 percent of the time."

rsaarelm 12y ago

People are already making DIY transcranial direct current stimulation gadgets for themselves. The setup apparently isn't much more complicated than a regular battery and two electrodes taped to your scalp. Someone at Reddit also seems to be working on making a consumer device for the lucid dreaming thing: http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/25aos9/published_in_nature_neuroscience_today_lucid/ http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/25aos9/publis...