Lucid dreaming occurs in activated rapid eye movement sleep, not a mixture of sleep and wakefulness.

Study Objectives: (1) To critically test whether a previously reported increase in frontolateral 40 Hz power in lucid REM sleep, used to justify the claim that lucid dreaming is a "hybrid state" mixing sleep and wakefulness, is attributable to the saccadic spike potential (SP) artifact as a corollary of heightened REM density. (2) To replicate the finding that lucid dreams are associated with physiological activation, including heightened eye movement density, during REM sleep. (3) To conduct an exploratory analysis of changes in EEG features during lucid REM sleep.

Two-Way Communication in Lucid REM Sleep Dreaming.

Dreamers were long thought absolutely isolated from the outside world. Yet psychophysiological studies over the past 40 years have firmly established that lucid dreamers can use eye movements to report on their dream content in real time while in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We now also know that sensory input is not completely suppresssed during sleep.

Smooth tracking of visual targets distinguishes lucid REM sleep dreaming and waking perception from imagination.

Humans are typically unable to engage in sustained smooth pursuit for imagined objects. However, it is unknown to what extent smooth tracking occurs for visual imagery during REM sleep dreaming. Here we examine smooth pursuit eye movements during tracking of a slow-moving visual target during lucid dreams in REM sleep.

Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming: A double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study.

Lucid dreaming is a remarkable state of consciousness in which one is aware of the fact that one is dreaming while continuing to dream. Based on the strong relationship between physiological activation during rapid eye-movement sleep and lucid dreaming, our pilot research investigated whether enhancing cortical activation via acetylcholinesterease inhibition (AChEI) would increase the frequency of lucid dreams and found AChEI to be a promising method for lucid dream induction. In the current study we sought to quantify the size and reliability of the effect of AChEI on lucid dreaming, dream recall and dream content as well as to test the effectiveness of an integrated lucid dream induction protocol which combined cholinergic stimulation with other methods for lucid dream induction.

Dreaming and waking: similarities and differences revisited.

Dreaming is often characterized as lacking high-order cognitive (HOC) skills. In two studies, we test the alternative hypothesis that the dreaming mind is highly similar to the waking mind. Multiple experience samples were obtained from late-night REM sleep and waking, following a systematic protocol described in Kahan (2001).