Scientists have successfully ‘chatted’ with a sleeping person in real time by invading their dreams, according to a new study. The researchers say it’s like trying to communicate with an astronaut over another world.
Dreamers can follow instructions, solve simple math problems and answer yes-no questions without ever waking up, according to the results of four experiments described in the journal Thursday (February 18). Current biology.
The researchers communicated directly with sleeping participants by asking them questions and responding with eye or face movements during lucid dreams – when people are at least aware that they are dreaming. (Some lucid dreamers may have control over what happens in their dreams.)
“You would expect that if you tried to sleep with someone who was sleeping, they just would not respond,” first author Karen Konkoly, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Illinois, told WordsSideKick. Although Konkoly hoped the real-time communication would work, she said she did not believe it when someone first responded to her questions from their dream.
Related: 7 thoughts bending facts about dreams
People dream every night, but scientists do not fully understand why we dream. Studying dreams is difficult because people often forget or distort details after waking up. This is partly because the brain does not form very new memories while you sleep and have a limited ability to store information accurately after the dream has ended, according to the study.
To overcome this limitation, the researchers tried to communicate with people while still dreaming. Because the participants in the study had lucid dreams, it meant that they could consciously exert themselves to respond to clues that came from outside, the researchers assumed.
Researchers placed electrodes on the participants’ heads to measure their brain waves; along their eyes, to detect eye movements; and on their chin to measure muscle activity. They used this data to determine when participants entered the rapid eye movement (BRAKE) stage of sleep, when lucid dreams are likely to occur most, Konkoly explained.
Four independent laboratory groups in the USA, Germany, France and the Netherlands conducted four separate experiments. During the experiments, the researchers used various techniques to communicate with dreamers during REM sleep, including asking their spoken questions and giving coded messages in flashing lights, beeps and physical taps that the dreamers were trained to decipher. If dreamers received and understood the question or message during a lucid dream, they answered with a set of characteristic eye or face movements interpreted by the electrode.
“Such two-way communication – from outside to inside the dream and back again – is something that seems to belong to the domain of science fiction,” said Pilleriin Sikka, senior lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at Sweden’s University of Skövde and postdoctoral researcher at Finnish University of Turku, Live Science said in an email. “Given how challenging it is to achieve clear dreams in the laboratory and that the study was conducted by four independent laboratory groups, the efforts of the researchers are remarkable,” she said.
However, Sikka notes that it was very difficult for the experiments to achieve this communication successfully – it was achieved in only six of the 36 participants in many attempts – which raises questions about the extent to which the findings can be generalized and repeated. .
About 23% of people have a lucid dream once a month or more, according to a 2016 research article published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. Konkoly helped to create lucid dreams in her experiments by training participants to associate a sound with a clear state of mind and then presenting it again with the sound or indication during sleep. (Those trying to experience lucid dreams for themselves can download an app called Lucid, developed by students at Northwestern University’s lab, Konkoly said.)
According to the researchers, the method can be adapted in the experiments to possibly adapt a person’s dream to a specific need, such as learning or dealing with emotional trauma.
Robert Stickgold, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the results of the study were ‘groundbreaking’, in an email to Live Science.
“The retrospective nature of dream reports is a challenge for studying dreams. Two-way, real-time communication between researchers and lucid dreamers immersed in REM sleep offers a new and exciting window into the study of dreams and dreams,” he said. Stickgold said. . It is still not clear “how easily these initial findings can be extended to real-life applications or to answer more complex questions about the nature and function of dreams”.
Some footage from the lucid dream experiments was recorded for an online NOVA, called PBS documentary “Dream Hackers: Bridge to Your Hidden Brain“, which will be available on YouTube from 18 February.
Originally published on Live Science.