Lucid dreaming frequency and personality
Personality and Individual Differences March 20, 2004 Michael Schredl, Daniel Erlacher 141 citations
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Michael Schredl
12 papers in the library · 753 citations · publishing 2004-2022
Papers
The Phenomenology of Lucid Dreaming: An Online Survey
The American Journal of Psychology April 21, 2014 Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Miriam Johnson et al. 104 citations
Lucid dreamers are aware they are dreaming. An online survey of 684 respondents, 571 of whom were lucid dreamers (83.5%), found that lucid dreams most often begin spontaneously in adolescence and last about 14 minutes on average. Dreamers are typically active, planning actions like flying, talking with dream characters, or having sex, but often fail to remember or execute these intentions due to awakening or obstacles in the dream. The frequency of lucid dreaming was the strongest predictor of dream phenomenology, with some differences linked to age, gender, and whether the dreamer was natural or self-trained.
Testing the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in lucid dreaming: A tDCS study
Consciousness and Cognition September 8, 2013 Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl 88 citations
Applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during REM sleep increased dream lucidity in frequent lucid dreamers, though the effects were not strong. Nineteen participants spent three nights in a sleep laboratory; on the second and third nights they randomly received either 1 mA tDCS for 10 minutes or sham stimulation during each REM period starting with the second one. Self-ratings showed increased lucidity only in frequent lucid dreamers. The results provide preliminary support for the involvement of the DLPFC in lucid dreaming, but further research controlling for indirect effects and including other brain regions is needed.
Frequency of Lucid Dreaming in a Representative German Sample
Perceptual and Motor Skills February 1, 2011 Michael Schredl, Daniel Erlacher 81 citations
About half (51%) of a representative sample of 919 German adults reported having had at least one lucid dream—a dream in which the person knows they are dreaming. Women recalled lucid dreams significantly more often than men, and lucid dream recall decreased with age. These differences may be explained by overall dream recall frequency, which correlated moderately (r = .57) with lucid dream frequency. Education, marital status, and income showed no relationship with how often people had lucid dreams. The high prevalence suggests that laboratory research on lucid dreams could further understanding of sleep, dreaming, and consciousness.
Practicing a Motor Task in a Lucid Dream Enhances Subsequent Performance: A Pilot Study
The Sport Psychologist June 1, 2010 Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl 76 citations
Practicing a motor task during a lucid dream can improve subsequent waking performance. In a pilot study, 40 participants were assigned to a lucid dream practice group, a physical practice group, or a control group. The task was tossing coins into a cup. Seven of the 20 volunteers in the lucid dream group successfully practiced the task in a lucid dream and showed a performance improvement from 3.7 to 5.3 successful tosses out of 20, while the other 13 in that group showed no improvement (from 3.4 to 2.9). The physical practice group improved the most, followed by the successful lucid dream group; both improved significantly more than the nondreaming and control groups. The design cannot distinguish whether specific motor learning or unspecific motivation caused the improvement.
Effectiveness of motor practice in lucid dreams: a comparison with physical and mental practice
Journal of Sports Sciences April 7, 2015 Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl 60 citations
Rehearsing a finger-tapping sequence during a lucid dream improves next-morning performance as much as physical or mental practice while awake. In an online experiment with 68 participants split into four groups, those who practiced in a lucid dream, physically, or mentally all significantly improved from evening pre-test to morning post-test, while the no-practice control group did not. Subjective sleep quality was unaffected by nighttime practice. The results confirm earlier work showing that motor practice in lucid dreams can enhance subsequent performance, with effects comparable to waking practice.
Increased Lucid Dreaming Frequency in Narcolepsy
SLEEP April 30, 2015 Michael Rak, P. Beitinger, Axel Steiger et al. 56 citations
People with narcolepsy recall dreams and nightmares significantly more often than healthy controls, and they also experience lucid dreaming—awareness of dreaming during a dream—at a much higher rate. Among 60 narcolepsy patients and 919 controls, narcolepsy patients reported roughly double the frequency of dream recall and nightmares, and their lucid dreaming frequency was about four times higher. Most narcolepsy patients who had experienced lucid dreaming said it helped relieve the distress from nightmares. Medication did not affect lucid dreaming frequency, though it did reduce dream recall and nightmare frequency.
Time for actions in lucid dreams: effects of task modality, length, and complexity
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2014 Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich, Tadas Stumbrys et al. 48 citations
Actions in lucid dreams take longer than the same actions in wakefulness, but only for motor tasks. Counting, a non-motor task, showed no time difference. In a sleep-laboratory experiment, lucid dreamers performed counting, walking, and a gymnastics routine while marking time intervals with eye movements. Walking and gymnastics required significantly more time in dreams than in waking, but the relative duration of each task remained proportional—no task was disproportionately longer. A more complex motor task did not increase the time delay. The findings suggest prolonged dream durations may stem from absent muscular feedback or slower neural processing during REM sleep.
Frequency of Lucid Dreams and Lucid Dream Practice in German Athletes
Imagination Cognition and Personality February 21, 2012 Daniel Erlacher, Tadas Stumbrys, Michael Schredl 36 citations
About 57% of German athletes have experienced a lucid dream at least once, 24% have one or more per month, and 9% of lucid dreamers have used the dream state to practice sport skills. Most of those athletes felt that such practice improved their waking performance. The prevalence of lucid dreaming among professional athletes is similar to the general population, but the proportion of lucid dreams relative to all dreams is nearly twice as high (14.5% vs. 7.5%). The findings suggest lucid dreaming offers a unique form of mental rehearsal for sports.
Dream lucidity is associated with positive waking mood.
Consciousness and cognition August 1, 2020 Abigail Stocks, Michelle Carr, Remington Mallett et al. 33 citations
Higher levels of lucidity during dreaming are associated with more positive dream content and a more positive mood the following day. Twenty participants completed a week-long online dream diary after practicing lucid dream induction techniques. The study found no link between lucidity and subjective sleep quality. The findings suggest that cultivating lucid dreams may help improve waking mood, though longer-term studies are needed.
Lucid Dreaming and the Feeling of Being Refreshed in the Morning: A Diary Study.
Clocks & sleep March 1, 2020 Michael Schredl, Sophie Dyck, Anja Kühnel 22 citations
Lucid dreaming does not impair the feeling of being refreshed in the morning. In a five-week dream diary study with 149 participants, nights with a lucid dream were followed by a higher feeling of being refreshed compared to nights with a non-lucid dream. Earlier cross-sectional studies had linked frequent lucid dreaming to poorer sleep quality, but that relationship was explained by nightmare frequency, not lucid dreaming itself. The findings indicate no negative effect of lucid dreaming on sleep's restorative function, though future research should use both objective and subjective measures of daytime tiredness.
Dream Recall Frequency, Lucid Dream Frequency, and Personality During the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Imagination, cognition and personality December 1, 2022 Michael Schredl, Anellka Remedios, Silvia Marin-Dragu et al. 8 citations
Dream recall frequency and lucid dream frequency vary widely among individuals and are partly linked to personality traits. An online survey of 1,537 participants (1,150 women, 387 men; mean age 35.1 years) confirmed that openness to experience is associated with higher dream recall, supporting the lifestyle hypothesis. However, associations between the Big Five personality factors and lucid dream frequency were less consistent; for example, neuroticism showed a negative relationship with lucid dream frequency. Effect sizes were small. Lucid dream frequency was related to COVID-19-related worries, while dream recall frequency was not.