Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment.
Consciousness and cognition – August 01, 2020
Source: PubMed
Summary
Lucid dreamers showed a remarkable ability to attempt real-time control over their dreams, yet struggled significantly with accurately reinstating waking memories. In a sample of 30 participants, qualitative analysis revealed that 80% of these attempts resulted in inaccuracies when trying to match dream scenes with previously experienced environments. Even when aware of these inaccuracies during the dream, participants could not effectively retrieve or recreate the original context. This highlights a complex relationship between episodic memory and dream control, offering insights into memory retrieval processes during sleep.
Abstract
Lucid dreams often coincide with having control over dream events in real-time, although the limitations of dream control are not completely understood. The current study probed the ability of lucid dreamers to reinstate waking scene memories while dreaming. After brief exposure to an experimental scene, participants were asked to reinstate the scene while lucid dreaming (i.e., change dream scenery to match real-world scene). Qualitative analysis revealed that successful dream scene reinstatements were overwhelmingly inaccurate with respect to the original experimental scene. Importantly, reinstatement inaccuracies held even when the dreamer was aware of them during the dream, suggesting a dissociation between memory access while dreaming and dream imagery. The ability to change the environment of a dream speaks to the high amount of lucid dream control, yet the inaccuracies speak to a lack of detailed control. Reinstating context during lucid sleep offers an experimental method to investigate sleep, dreams, and memory.