Scientists have identified a new phenomenon called interactive sleep, within which a sleeping person experiencing a lucid dream can follow instructions, answer simple questions, and even solve basic math problems.
Sleep is still a kind of "gray area" of modern science. In particular, scientists are interested in the REM sleep phase, during which we see the most colorful dreams. The ability to communicate directly with a sleeping person, and not be guided by his memories and sensations upon awakening, would significantly deepen the understanding of the psychology of this phase. Psychologist Ken Peller and his colleagues at Northwestern University decided to conduct an experiment in which they tried to get feedback from people experiencing lucid dreaming.
The study involved 36 people. One of the test subjects suffered from narcolepsy and regularly experienced lucid dreams, several people experienced a similar phenomenon only periodically, and the rest had such cases of altered consciousness. For the purity of the study, participants were tested in four separate experiments using a variety of approaches. By tracking various phases of sleep using an electroencephalogram of the brain, the scientists interacted with subjects using sound, light and physical contact. In turn, the participants in the experiment had to answer questions requiring an affirmative or negative answer, for example, "Do you know Spanish?", As well as solve elementary math problems or report on the number of flashes of light and touches they saw.
The method of answering the questions asked was approved by a specific participant in advance, whether it be a purposeful movement of the eyeballs or individual groups of facial muscles. The researchers tried to establish "interactive sleep" over 57 sessions. As a result of the experiment, in 26% of cases, the participants were able to confirm that they were in a state of lucid dreaming. The success of two-way communication was complicated by the fact that people woke up trying to blink or excessively moving their eyes, trying to answer the questions asked. As a result, in half of their lucid dreams, 6 out of 36 participants were able to give 29 correct answers and 5 incorrect ones.
Interaction example: The sleeper demonstrates the solution to a mathematical example using purposeful eye movement
In this example, the sleeper received the task using Morse code transmitted by flashing LEDs.
Interestingly, regardless of the way they interact, sleepers remembered differently how the intervention of the researchers was superimposed on their sleep. For example, in some cases, scientists' "intrusions" were gracefully entangled in the context of the dream and looked quite natural - in the form of friendly dialogue at a party, radio communication messages, or flickering room lamps. However, it also happened that the sleeper was fully aware of the foreignness of the stimulus, but could respond to it by continuing the dream.
According to Peller, interacting with sleepers partly reminded him of trying to contact an astronaut in another world, only this world was created from the memories and sensations of a person. According to scientists, the study "Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep" does not just expand the general understanding of what happens to the human brain during sleep. Peller believes that in the future, "interactive sleep" may form the basis of treatment for some mental health problems. However, for this, researchers still have a lot of work to do. For example, no less significant object of subsequent experiments will be the relationship between dreams and memory, as well as the possibility of using memory resources in sleep to assess a person's cognitive abilities and train various skills.
Example test with narcolepsy: for statements he strained his cheek muscles, and to deny -myshtsu the corrugator eyebrow
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