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Typically, when we dream, we are not aware that we are dreaming, and the most unlikely events, characters, and environments seem real to us.<\/p>\n
But now and again, some of us realize that we are in a dream as we are dreaming. This phenomenon is called \u201clucid dreaming,\u201d and it has stirred the interest of researchers and the public alike.<\/p>\n
Learning to control aspects of your dreams can be a great way of exploring activities you could never do in real life, facing and overcoming fears, and learning more about your subconscious.<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0previous special feature\u00a0on\u00a0Medical News Today,\u00a0we have explained what lucid dreams are, talked about some techniques you can apply to achieve them, and looked at whether there are any risks associated with this practice.<\/p>\n
In this article, we take that discussion a step further, looking at some of the science behind lucid dreaming.<\/p>\n
So if you are interested in finding out how common lucid dreams are, who is more prone to having them and why, and what happens in the brain during a lucid dream, read on.<\/p>\n
How common are lucid dreams?<\/strong> A 2017 study published in the journal\u00a0Imagination, Cognition and Personality: Consciousness in Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice\u00a0referred to estimates suggesting that in a representative population, 51% of the individuals had experienced a lucid dream at least once in their lives, and about 20% experienced lucid dreams at least once a month.<\/p>\n The same study notes that people are more likely to experience spontaneous lucid dreams in their childhood, starting at about 3 and 4 years old. However, the likelihood of lucid dreaming begins to decline in early adolescence.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter the age of 25, spontaneous onset of lucid dreaming appears to be very infrequent,\u201d the study authors write.<\/p>\n The researchers who hail from the Universities of Mannheim and Heidelberg, both in Germany investigated whether or not personality traits could help predict a person\u2019s likelihood of experiencing lucid dreams.<\/p>\n The study found that openness to an experience correlates positively with lucid dreaming frequency. However, agreeableness a personality trait that often indicates a person\u2019s level of friendliness and tact in interpersonal relationships \u2014 does not.<\/p>\n The study also identified that neuroticism a personality factor that often presents as strong moods, anxiety, and depression had associations with a higher frequency of lucid dreams.<\/p>\n Lucid dreams and sleep disturbances<\/strong> More often than not, lucid dreaming occurs during the\u00a0REM\u00a0(rapid eye movement) phase of sleep, which is also when many regular dreams occur. It is possible that neurochemical peculiarities may play a role in \u201cswitching on\u201d parts of our consciousness when they would generally be \u201cswitched off.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m speculating a little bit here, but some people might just tend to produce more of the neurotransmitters that pause REM sleep, typically acetylcholine,\u201d Aspy told us.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might have some random variation in neurology or neurochemistry\u00a0 I know that people with narcolepsy tend to have a lot more lucid dreams than the average person, and they\u2019re having a lot of sleep disturbances,\u201d he went on to say.<\/p>\n Some anecdotal experiences, as well as some studies, suggest that lucid dreaming may have more in common with the experience of\u00a0sleep paralysis\u00a0than that of regular dreaming.<\/p>\n In\u00a0sleep paralysis, the mind awakens to a certain degree, while the body remains asleep and unable to move. When that happens, individuals usually experience very realistic hallucinations, as though the content of a dream had \u201cleaked\u201d into the real world.<\/p>\n For instance, a 2017 study \u2014 featured in the\u00a0Journal of Sleep Research\u00a0\u2014 found a significant positive correlation between sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming frequency in a cohort of 1,928 adult participants.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is likely that these sleep experiences are underlined by similar neurophysiology,\u201d the study authors write.<\/p>\n They also note that \u201c[d]issociative experience was the only common predictor of both sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming frequency, indicating that individuals who experience both unusual sleep experiences also experience greater dissociative experiences in daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Typically, when we dream, we are not aware that we are dreaming, and the most unlikely events, characters, and environments seem real to us. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1337,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions\/1337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tipsforahealthylife.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt remains unclear how many people experience lucid dreams, but researchers have provided rough estimates based on personal reports they accessed through their studies.<\/p>\n
\nDenholm Aspy, Ph.D., who researches lucid dreaming, spoke to\u00a0MNT\u00a0and suggested that certain neurophysiological or neurochemical factors may also render a person more likely to experience spontaneous lucid dreams.<\/p>\n