Lucid Dreaming

THE STATE KNOWN AS LUCID DREAMING IS an unquestionably surreal one, and it just got even more so. A team of researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands has discovered that lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness separate from both wakefulness and REM sleep (the state usually associated with dreams). In fact, it is associated with its own type of brain activity.

- Elizabeth Rayne

To identify what sets lucid dreaming apart from the rest of sleep, the team pulled previous studies together into what is now the most extensive dataset in this field of sleep research. The researchers then compared brain activity patterns for wakefulness, REM sleep, and lucid dreaming to find that the eerie self-awareness experienced in lucid dreams is connected to certain types of brain waves.