258 [128] LaBER@tppronead AEMRelease 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003100140001-2 tion of psychophysiological correspondence during REM dreaming. The viability of this approach has been demonstrated for a variety of dreamed behaviors including dreamed hand and eye movements, subjective estima- tion of temporal duration in the dream (LaBerge, 1985a), dreamed singing and counting (LaBerge and Dement, 1982a), voluntary alterations of respira- tion (LaBerge and Dement, 1982b), and dreamed sexual activity (LaBerge, Greenleaf, and Kedzierski, 1983). References Aserinsky, E. (1971). Rapid eye movement density and pattern in the sleep of normal young adults, Psychophysiology, 8, 361-375. Cohen, D. (1979). Sleep and dreaming: Origins, nature and functions. Oxford: Pergamon. Dane, J. (1983). An empirical evaluation of two techniques for lucid dream induction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia State University. Fenwick, P., Schatzman, M., Worsley, A., Adams, J., Stone, S., and Baker, A. (1984). Lucid dreaming: Correspondence between dreamed and actual events'in one subject during REM sleep. Biological Psychology, 18, 243-252. Garfield, P. (1975). Psychological concomitants of the lucid dream state. Sleep Research, 4, 183. Green, C. (1968). Lucid dreams. London: Hamish Hamilton. Hearne, K.M.T. (1978). Lucid dreams: An electrophysiological and psychological study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Liverpool. LaBerge, S. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51, 1039-1042. LaBerge, S. (1985a). Lucid dreaming. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher. LaBerge, S. (1985b). The temporal distribution of lucid dreams. Sleep Research, 14, 113. LaBerge, S., and Dement, W.C. (1982a). Lateralization of alpha activity for dreamed singing and counting during REM sleep. Psychophysiology, 19, 331-332. LaBerge, S., and Dement, W.C. (1982b). Voluntary control of tespiration during REM sleep. Sleep Research, 11, 107. LaBerge, S., Greenleaf, W., and Kedzierski, B. (1983). Physiological responses to dreamed sex- ual activity during lucid REM sleep. Psychophysiology, 20, 454-455. LaBerge, S., Nagel, L-E., Dement, W.C., and Zarcone, V.P. (1981). Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 52, 727-732. Rechtschaffen, A., and Kales, A. (Eds.) (1968). A manual of standardized teminology, techniques and scoring system for sleep stages of human subjects. Bethesda: HEW Neurological Information Network. Tyson, P.D., Ogilvie, R.D., and Hunt, H.T. (1984). Lucid, prelucid, and nonlucid dreams related to the amount of EEG alpha activity during REM sleep. Psychophysiology, 21, 442-451. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003100140001-2
vue remaining 21 (28%) as WIA pHOMed heecRaiaas eal NW/08/08 : Cl “ROP SCN TARRA0SHA 044009 1iBributed within REM periods and than WILDs (binomial test, p < .0001). Compared to DILDs WILD: more frequently immediately preceded by physiological indications of a ing (Chi-squared = 38.3, | df, p< .0001), establishing the validit, ing lucid dreams in this manner. See Figures 2 and 3 for illustrati types of lucid dreams. The distributions of DILD and WILD Jatencies from the onset of REM significantly different (LaBerge, Levitan, & Dement, 1986). A Wald-W. . test demonstrated that WILDs do not occur a ; DILDs do (p < .0015). This difference may be simply explained: As am definition, a necessary condition for a WILD to occur is a transitory awaken; followed by a return to REM sleep. If the awakening were to happen too near the beginning of REM, the REM period might simply be aborted. Similarly t the awakening were to occur too near to the ‘‘natural’’ end of the REM perio’ " would be more likely that REM would not resume but that wakefulness wor, } persist or a NREM sleep stage would ensue. , oud To summarize, an elevated level of CNS activatio Te ; m seems to be a neces; condition for the occurrence of lucid dreams. Were this condition unnecessary. Tg 7 ee 14 ~- ROC 1 faye ROC+| 4 ~~~ ir a | La a ECG 444. Pie 4 LALA LAS Figure 3. A typical lucid dream initiated from a transient awakening during REM (WILD). Six channels of physiological data (left and right temporal EEG [T, and T,], left and right eye movements [LOC and ROC], chin muscle tone |EMGI, and electrocardiogram [ECG]) from the last 3 min of a 14-min REM period are shown. The subject awoke at 1 and after 40 seconds returned to REM sleep at 2, and realized he was dreaming 15 s later and signaled at 3. Next he carried out the agreed-upon experimental task in his lucid dream, singing between signals 3 and 4, and counting between signals 4 and 5. This allowed comparison of left and right hemisphere activation during the two tasks (LaBerge & Dement, 1982b). Note the heart-rate acceleration-deceleration pattern at awakening (1) and at lucidity onset (3) and the skin poten” tial tential artifacts in the EE particular ly T at lucidity onset Calibrations are 50 | S Were f Waken. “TORY Of classify. ons of these two 4 OCCUr aS early or late in REM Howite 1are REM periods as atter of eee A la rR haps every stage of sleep. Why then is CNS activation necessary for lucid d reaming? Evidently the high level of cognitive function involved in lucid dreaming requires 2 correspondingly high level of neuronal activation. In terms of Antrobus’s (1986) adaptation of Anderson’s (1983) ACT* model of cognition to dreaming. working memory capacity is proportional to cognitive activation, which in turn is proportional to cortical activation. Becoming lucid requires an adequate level of working memory to activate the presleep intention to recognize that one IS dreaming. This level of activation is apparently not always available during sleep but normally only during phasic REM. THE TEMPORAL DISTRIBUTION OF LUCID DREAMS St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned “‘that sometimes while asleep a man may judge that what he sees is a dream, discerning as it were, between things and their images” and that this happens especially ‘‘towards the end of sleep, in sober men and those who are gifted with a strong imagination.” (Aquinas, 1947, p. 430). Van Eeden (1913) stated that his lucid dreams invariably occurred between 5 and 8 o'clock in the morning. By way of explanation, he quoted Dante’s characterization of these hours as the time ‘‘when swallows begin to warble and our mind is least clogged by the material body.’’ Garfield (1975) exactly agreed with van Eeden’s observation, though perhaps not with his poetic explanation. LaBerge (1979) plotted the times of 212 of his lucid dreams and found their pattern of occurrence closely fit the usual cyclic distribution of REM periods. He suggested that the fact that most REM sleep occurs toward the end of the night provided a plausible explanation for Van Eeden’s and Garfield's obser- vations. Later, LaBerge (1980a) tested this hypothesis by comparing the tem- poral distribution of his lucid dreams with that expected on the basis of normative data from Williams, Karacan, and Jursch (1974). A chi-square test indicated that the observed distribution of lucid dreams in the first three REM periods was not significantly different from what would be expected on the basis of mean REM period lengths at different times of the night. Cohen (1979) argued that the left hemisphere shows a gradual increase in dominance across the night (but see Armitage, Hoffmann, Moffitt, & Shearer, 1985). Since left-hemisphere abstract symbolic functions are undoubtedly crucial for lucid dreaming, Cohen’s GILD hypothesis led LaBerge (1985b) to predict that the probability of dream lucidity should increase with time of night. This hypothesis was tested by LaBerge et al. (1986). For each of their 12 subjects, a median split for total REM time was determined, 11 of their subjects had more lucid dreams in the later half of their REM than in the earlier (binomial test; p < .01). For the combined sample, relative lucidity probability was calcu- lated for REM periods | through 6 of the night by dividing the total number of Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003100140001-2
SICrMcin LABEKGE lucid dreams observed in a gi APRERYACOAG mRakeasadah QUABLOB stage REM for the same REM period. A regression analysis clearly demonstrate that relative lucidity probability was a linear function of ordinal REM Period number (r = .98, p < .0001). No measure of activation (EM, RR, HR, SP) even approached significance when entered into the regression equation, indicating that the increase in lucid dream probability is not explained by a general increase in CNS activation across the night. These results strongly support the conclusion that lucid dreams are more likely to occur in later REM periods than in earlier ones—provided, of course, that sleep is continued long enough. Another factor influencing the temporal distribution of lucid dreams is initiation type. LaBerge’s (1987) personal record of lucid dreams indicates that, for him, W-type lucid dreams are over 10 times more frequent during afternoon naps than they are during the first REM period of the night (p_<_.0002). psYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF LUCID DREAMING “ROE OS +007 89RO0319914090 AsSciated with high alpha activity. One -. that the differences found between low and high alpha reports were based - arily on the degrees of prelucidity in the reports. Even more important, we ‘aa no assurance of whether, in either condition, the episode of prelucidity or ait occurred in association with the final 20 to 30 second period of either oe low alpha activity that determined the awakening condition. Moreover, ie ause none of the dreams classified as lucid were marked by any signals, we bwe no proof that they were in fact lucid dreams, nor in any case do we have any way of determining what the degree of alpha activity was during the frequently i i ; . ae te bret Piso Orie - al.’s (1982) design, we cannot exclude the possibility that what their study may actually have demonstrated is that the tendencies of EEG ALPHA ACTIVITY DURING REM LUCID DREAMS The fact that lucid dreaming occurs during REM sleep partially defines the sort of EEG activity characteristic of lucid dreams. However, the standard crite- tia for determining REM sleep (Rechtschaffen & Kales, 1968) are quite general when referring to the EEG, being simply “relatively low voltage, mixed fre- quency,”” without specifying how much of which frequencies might be mixed. As noted previously, REM sleep is a labile and heterogeneous state. For exam- ple, during REM, the EEG sometimes shows predominant 2 to 3 Hz ‘‘sawtooth”’ waves, whereas at other times it may exhibit prominent 8 to 10 Hz alpha waves. Consequently, the question arises: Does the range of EEG activity characteristic of lucid dreams reliably differ in any way from that of nonlucid dreams? In a series of studies, Ogilvie and colleagues have pursued the hypothesis that lucid dreams are associated with high levels of alpha activity. In the first of these investigations, they came to the initial ‘‘impression that alpha is the domi- nant EEG frequency during lucid dreams’’ on the rather Shaky grounds of a comparison of ‘‘percent alpha in the EEG”’ of just two lucid dream REM periods with percentage alpha for six nonlucid dream REM periods for a single subject (Ogilvie, Hunt, Sawicki, & McGowan, 1978, p. 165). Ogilvie, Hunt, Tyson, Lucescu, and Jeakins (1982) followed up their pre- liminary work with a larger study in which 10 subjects (all good dream recallers, with a wide range of lucid dreaming ability) were recorded 2 nights each in the sleep laboratory, during which they were awakened four times per night from REM sleep: half of the time during periods of relatively high alpha and half of the time during relatively low alpha. Dream reports were collected and rated on a lucidity scale by a judge blind to the awakening condition. Significantly higher lucidity ratings were obtained for high-alpha compared to low-alpha awakenings. Several methodological problems of this study cast doubt on Ogilvie et al.’s j -have_been_briefly_or_partially _ Tacid vary with the amount of alpha activity either just before or during the process of awakening. Support for this interpretation comes from an cars study, which concluded that mentation reports collected from REM pen ‘. showing EEGs with a high proportion of alpha waves were associates “ “some feeling of control over the content’’ and were frequently labe ry subjects as *‘thoughts’’ rather than *‘dreams’’ (Goodenough, Shapiro, Holden, i iber, 1959). . here 8 another * ossible design problem with the Ogilvie et al. (1982) study that seems serious enough to merit mention: The judges lucidity ratings were based not upon the spontaneous dream reports but on the subjects answers to rather leading questions subsequently posed by the interviewer, such as Was there any point when you wondered whether or not you might be reamnine and ‘‘Was there any point at which you knew you were dreaming while t e dream was going on?’’ The demand characteristics should be obvious. — tionally, there is a problem that retrospective judgments about earlier states 0 mind are likely to be confounded by our current mental state. Cognitive capaci- ties we currently possess are likely to be mistakenly remembered as having been present in an earlier state. A conservative approach should perhaps put ‘more weight on the original dream reports; in the present context, one wouid like to know how many subjects spontaneously mentioned in their reports that they had been prelucid or lucid. In a more recent study, Ogilvie et al. (1983) remedied several of these methodological problems and arrived at a conclusion regarding alpha activity and lucidity unsupportive of their earlier work. They studied eight lucid dreamers for | to 4 nights in a sleep lab. The subjects were awakened from REM following spontaneous or cued eye movement signals. The cue buzzer sounded after 15S minutes of REM during periods of either high or low alpha activity. The subjects were to signal at the cue and again 30 seconds later if in a lucid dream. Reports were elicited 30 to 60 seconds after cued or spontaneous signals and rated for lucidity. Contrary to their earlier findings, the low-alpha condition yielded Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003100140001-2
DIEPRIEN LABERGE Approved For Release 2000/08/08 slightly more lucid dreams than the high-alpha condition; however, this dif. ference was not statistically significant. Addressing this same issue, LaBerge (1980b) performed a Fourier analysis on EEG activity (C3/A1) for a single lucia dream REM period. Comparison of the spectral profiles for the lucid and nop. lucid portions of the REM period revealed alpha activity for the nonlucid portion to more closely resemble the waking EEG spectrum than did that in the lucid portion; however, the two REM samples did not significantly differ. In summary, it would seem that at this point no reliable association of Incig dreaming with alpha activity (whether high or low) has been established. A more productive approach to the question of EEG in lucid versus nonlucid REM would probably involve quantifying whole-band EEG frequency spectra from several electrode placements and comparing signal-verified lucid dreams with nonlucid controls. NREM LUCID DREAMS The findings summarized here indicating that lucid dreams typically occur in REM sleep should not be misconstrued to suggest that lucid dreams never . occur in NREM sleep. In fact, in LaBerge, Nagel, Dement and Zarcone’s initial study (1981), lucid dreams were reported by two subjects after spontaneous awakening from NREM sleep (Stage-2 once; Stage-1, twice). The Stage-2 report indicated only a brief moment of lucidity before awakening; because the subject was unable to signal while lucid we cannot be certain that her experience took place during Stage-2 sleep and not while awakening. As for the NREM Stage-1 reports, although the subject reported signaling before awakening on these occa- sions, no signals could be verified on her polysomnogram. LaBerge (1980a) polysomnographically recorded a single trained subject during sleep onset on 3 consecutive nights. The subject reported a rich history of hypnagogic imagery. On the experimental nights, she made an effort to retain consciousness while entering sleep-onset dream states. ‘‘Dreaming’’ was dis- tinguished from other sleep-onset mentation by the two requirements that (1) the subject was subjectively asleep (i.e., unaware of the actual position of her body in bed) and (2) that she hallucinated her body within the dream scene. On each of the experimental sessions (lasting about 2 hours), the subject repeatedly rested quietly, but vigilantly, and while drifting off to sleep counted to herself (‘‘One, two, three, . . .’’) until she began to dream, at which point she awakened and tape-recorded a mentation report. In 25 of the 42 resultant dream teports (all of which were very short), the subject claimed to have been lucid. The following is a typical report: ‘‘I am in the grocery store, going down an aisle; only I am standing on a cart. It is whizzing real fast. As 1 go by the Coke and Pepsi bottles, I realize that | am dreaming. I think to look at my hands, but they won’t move up to eye level”’ (p. 101). Note the absence of voluntary control over the body image, a very unusual condition for REM lucid dreams. Visual poyens 7c A-RDP'9G PLB REA QN4AQAAa2aNI of these ‘‘dreamlets"’ to have i i nts. during Stage-! sleep, with slow eye moveme cco jlot study makes it clear that the observed frequency of NREM lucid me rill depend on experimental demand characteristics. The same point ts oy Dane (1983), who found a high proportion of lucid dream reports mae rom NREM under conditions of heightened attention during sleep onset elicit instructions that ‘‘dreams occur during NREM as well as during mM yeep" (p. 249). A comparative study of REM versus NREM (and ‘‘wak- ee) lucid dreaming clearly needs to be done. dreamin psyCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS DURING REM SLEEP One of the major obstacles impeding the development of human con ‘ousness as a topic of rigorous scientific study has been that the only irec ne t available of the private events occurring in a person’s mind is his or her ee subjective report. Subjective reports, unfortunately, are not subject to objec- tive verification—at least not directly. To make matters worse, of all the La witnesses’ ’—as Heraclitus catled the senses— ‘‘introspection appears pe the least reliable. Introspection is not really even a sense: We do net am yon ok and see” the contents of our minds; what we see”’ there is large y epen eo what we expect to see based on our theories of ourselves. These t cone en ae rtray ourselves as more consistent and rational than we really are ( is Wilson, 1977). Given that the only witness is of uncertain reliability, w at we need in order to study consciousness more objectively is a means of corr . " : ing the testimony of the ‘‘I-witness,”’ and this is precisely the oe ° a“ psychophysiological approach. A key element in this new strategy is , “ i cat making full use of the subject's cooperativeness and intelligence. reat m practice in experimental psychology requires the deception of subjects a ou : true nature of the experiment. This has the advantage of minimizing the effect t ne subject’s knowledge might have on the experiment. But this particular met - odology is inappropriate when the object of the investigation Is the subject s own consciousness. In this case, a more suitable approach is one in which the i- chotomous subject/experimenter relationship is modified: Perhaps subjects should be regarded as—to borrow an anthropological term—participant— observers. What about the problem of the uncertain reliability of introspective accounts of consciousness? There are two strategies likely to increase our confidence in the reliability of subjective reports: In the first place, It helps to study highly trained (and lucid) subjects who are skillful reporters. Second, we can make use of the fact that the convergent agreement of physiological measures and subjec- live reports provides a degree of validation to the latter (Stoyva and Kamiya, 1968). The fact that lucid dreamers can remember to perform predetermined ac- Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003100140001-2