What is lucid dreaming?” (Sleeping & Dreaming Part 3)

Can you become conscious inside a dream? Can a researcher convey information to a dreamer, and can the dreamer find some way to answer back? Does 10 seconds inside a dream equal 10 seconds in real life? Could taking a drug inside a dream give you a placebo effect? Can you prompt your brain like a large language model? And if so, what would you pose to your unconscious brain? Join David Eagleman and guest Jonathan Berent to discover the what, why, and how of lucid dreaming.

Episode Audio

Episode Video

More Information:

Baird B, Mota-Rolim SA, Dresler M. (2019). The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 2019 May 1;100:305-23.

Voss U, Holzmann R, Tuin I, Hobson AJ. (2009). Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. Sleep. 2009 Sep 1;32(9):1191-200.

Kahan TL, LaBerge S, Levitan L, Zimbardo P. (1997). Similarities and differences between dreaming and waking cognition: An exploratory study. Consciousness and Cognition. 1997 Mar 1;6(1):132-47.

Raduga M, Zhunusova Z, Shashkov A, Brauns A. (2023). Placebo without deception: Psychoactive drug intake in lucid dreaming and its effect upon awakening.

LaBerge S, Rheingold H. (1990). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books; 1990 Sep.

Waggoner R. (2008). Lucid dreaming: Gateway to the inner self. Red Wheel/Weiser; 2008 Oct 1.

Zerr P, Adelhöfer N, Dresler M. The neuroscience of lucid dreaming: Past, present, future. Neuron. 2024 Apr 3;112(7):1040-4.

SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN ON:

"What Eagleman seems to be calling for is a new Enlightenment."
- Sunday Herald

"David Eagleman offers startling lessons.... His method is to ask us to cast off our lazy commonplace assumptions.
- The Guardian

"Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness."
- The New Yorker

"David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive."
- Stewart Brand

"[A] neuroscientist and polymath."
- Wall Street Journal

"A popularizer of impressive gusto...[Eagleman] aims, grandly, to do for the study of the mind what Copernicus did for the study of the stars."
- New York Observer