Our dreams contain experiences involving all five human senses, but not all senses are represented equally frequently. For example, it is quite rare to find reports of smell and taste data, especially in men. Blind people, on the other hand, sometimes have dreams without visual images but rich in sounds or smells, and people who have had a hand or leg amputated can feel their phantom limbs in their dreams. Are these sensations part of the mechanism of dreaming or are they just “special effects”?
To find out the answer, researchers from REMspace—Elena Drøm, Michael Raduga, Anna Popenko, Andrey Shashkov, and Zhanna Zhunusova—decided to conduct an experiment in lucid dreaming. Experienced practitioners of lucid dreaming can control the intensity of sensations in their dreams, thus making it possible to test how important sensory experience is for the physiology of dreaming.
The experiment involved 250 volunteers who were divided into two groups. All participants were instructed to enter a lucid dream. Once inside the dream, the experimental group was meant to intentionally avoid sensations as much as possible, while the control group was told to “go with the flow,” experiencing all the images, sounds, and smells that appeared. Both groups measured the spent in the lucid dream in seconds.
It turned out that almost every second participant (49%) was able to stay in a “sensationless” lucid dream for no more than ten seconds, while only 8% of the control group failed to go beyond this threshold. Mostly, lucid dreamers in the sensationless group woke up or lost lucidity, entering an ordinary dream.
Overall, dreamers who avoided sensations stayed significantly less time inside the lucid dream. The researchers concluded that sensations themselves can play an important role in the physiological mechanism of dreaming and are not just a consequence of this process. Perhaps it is no accident, then, that lucid dreamers are especially fond of techniques based on intensifying sensory experience.
Do you use sensations to prolong your lucid dreams?
The article was published in April 2023 in the journal Dreaming.
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