Have you ever woken up in the middle of a dream and realized you were dreaming? This experience, known as lucid dreaming, could become much more common thanks to a new app developed by researchers at Northwestern University. The technology promises to triple the chances of lucid dreaming, opening up new frontiers in the exploration of consciousness during sleep.
What are lucid dreams?
Un lucid dream occurs when the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while the dream is still ongoing. This awareness can allow them to actively influence the content of the dream, transforming the dream experience into something more like a controllable virtual reality. The ability to have lucid dreams is not common. On average, people report less than one lucid dream per week, and many have never experienced one. How to have lucid dreams? Good question. So good that it has long been one that has interested both researchers and enthusiasts of dream experiences.
Technological innovation
The researchers of the Northwestern University have developed an application that uses an innovative approach to induce lucid dreams. The app makes users listen to a specific sound before going to sleep, helping them to associate it with a state of awareness of their body and thoughts (it is an approach successfully tested in previous studies). Six hours after falling asleep, during REM sleep, the app plays the same sound. This stimulus is designed to reawaken the dreamer's awareness, increasing the chances of achieving lucidity during the dream.
Karen Konkoly, cognitive neuroscientist of the Northwestern University, emphasizes that having one lucid dream a week is already a remarkable achievement.
Lucid Dreaming, Research Results
The study, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition (I link it here), initially involved 19 participants who used the app for a week. The results were surprising: the average number of lucid dreams went from 0,74 to 2,11 per week.
To verify that the increase was indeed due to the sounds in the app, the researchers conducted a second experiment with 112 people, using several control groups. The results confirmed that participants exposed to the “trained” sounds were significantly more likely to experience lucid dreams than the other groups. 17% of participants achieved this goal on the first night, confirming that the sound-lucidity association is a key element for success.
Implications and future prospects
For skeptics it may seem absurd, I realize. Maybe because I'm one of the skeptics, I guess. Yet the data is clear: controlling your dreams is becoming a scientific reality. This technology could make lucid dreaming accessible to a much wider audience. The applications are many: from consciousness research to treating nightmares, through creativity and personal development. The simplicity of the approach is particularly promising. Unlike laboratory sleep studies, which require sophisticated equipment and constant monitoring, this app can be used in the comfort of your own home.
The researchers suggest that this may be just the first of a new generation of technologies designed to explore and influence the dream world. As long as they don't find a way to stick some ads in the middle, obviously.
