Lucid Dreamers Dispaly Greater Insight in Waking Life

First Posted: Aug 13, 2014 06:43 AM EDT
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A team of UK researchers found that people who experience 'lucid dreaming' have better than average problem-solving abilities.

Led by experts from the University of Lincoln, UK, researchers claimed that those who are aware that they are asleep while dreaming (Lucid dreaming) are better at solving problems in the waking world when compared to those who remain unaware of the dream until they wake up.

This is the first study that looks at the association between lucid dreaming and insight. This concept - lucid dreaming - was explored in the film Inception that released in 2010.  In the movie, the dreamers were able to successfully identify the absurdities within their dream. 

It is believed that very few have this ability due to the higher level of insight, meaning their brains identify that they are in a dream because in real world the same events would be senseless. This cognitive ability converts to the waking world at time of finding a solution for a problem by picking hidden clues or inconsistencies.

"It is believed that for dreamers to become lucid while asleep, they must see past the overwhelming reality of their dream state, and recognize that they are dreaming. The same cognitive ability was found to be demonstrated while awake by a person's ability to think in a different way when it comes to solving problems," said Dr. Bourke.

In this study, nearly 68 subjects, aged between 18-25 years who experienced various levels of lucid dreaming, were examined. This varied from never to several times a month. These participants were then asked to solve 30 problems that were specially designed to test the participants' insight. Each problem had three words and solution word. Each of three words was then clubbed with the solution word to form a new compound word.

The researchers noticed that frequent lucid dreamers successfully solved 25 percent more of the insight problems than the non-lucid dreamers.

The research, called "Spontaneous Lucid Dreaming and Waking Insight", was published in the American Psychological Association's journal, Dreaming.

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