People who are asleep and having a lucid dream—aware that they are dreaming—can perceive questions from an experimenter and answer them in real time using eye movements and facial muscle contractions. In a study of 36 individuals during REM sleep, including frequent lucid dreamers, a novice, and a patient with narcolepsy, participants performed perceptual analysis of new information, held information in working memory, computed simple answers, and gave volitional replies. Correct answers occurred on 29 occasions across 6 individuals, documented by four independent laboratories. This two-way communication channel allows real-time interrogation of dream cognition and characteristics.
Only about 20% of people regularly experience lucid dreams, but induction techniques can increase their frequency. External stimulation aims to integrate cues into dreams to remind the sleeper they are dreaming. This project replicated such induction with low-cost, portable equipment: an OpenBCI Cyton EEG board for sleep scoring and a mask with two LEDs controlled by a microcontroller. Two volunteers slept for two hours in a lab. One reported that blue lights from the mask were incorporated into their dream; the other awoke during stimulation. These results align with prior work. Ongoing research includes automated online sleep scoring and testing vibro-tactile stimulation.