Abstract
Metacognitive reflections on one's current state of mind are largely absent during dreaming. Lucid dreaming as the exception to this rule is a rare phenomenon; however, its occurrence can be facilitated through cognitive training. A central idea of respective training strategies is to regularly question one's phenomenal experience: is the currently experienced world real, or just a dream? Here, we tested if such lucid dreaming training can be enhanced with dream-like virtual reality (VR): over the course of four weeks, volunteers underwent lucid dreaming training in VR scenarios comprising dream-like elements, classical lucid dreaming training or no training. We found that VR-assisted training led to significantly stronger increases in lucid dreaming compared to the no-training condition. Eye signal-verified lucid dreams during polysomnography supported behavioural results. We discuss the potential mechanisms underlying these findings, in particular the role of synthetic dream-like experiences, incorporation of VR content in dream imagery serving as memory cues, and extended dissociative effects of VR session on subsequent experiences that might amplify lucid dreaming training during wakefulness.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.
Highlights
Lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness during sleep whereby neurophysiologically demodulated aspects of cognition—self-reflection, critical analysis and introspective insight—are aberrantly restored and made available within one’s dreams [1]
We found that virtual reality (VR)-assisted training led to significantly stronger increases in lucid dreaming compared to the no-training condition
The original rationale for this study was for the provision of synthetically generated dream-like environments and for participants to question their reality with these environments, in order to ascertain whether the success of lucid dreaming training could be improved
Summary
Lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness during sleep whereby neurophysiologically demodulated aspects of cognition—self-reflection, critical analysis and introspective insight—are aberrantly restored and made available within one’s dreams [1]. Having the waking thought ‘am I dreaming?’ may become a habituated cognitive process and be randomly reactivated while dreaming. Somewhat paradoxically, such reactivation can result in profound state changes at both the psychological and physiological level; merely dreaming that one ‘critically questions reality’ can result in that critique being performed authentically. In other words, reflecting upon the authenticity of one’s environment while asleep can produce the necessary state changes in neurological activity as to generate lucidity as an explicit psychological endpoint. Since waking life rarely contains dream-like or surreal moments, the provision of these environments via VR would be one way to increase the availability of convincingly dream-like experiences; within which a moment for genuine critical reflection is made available. Our hypothesis was that VR-enhanced lucid dreaming training would be more effective in increasing lucid dreaming than cognitive training only, which in turn would be more effective than no training
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