Psychophysiological basis of lucid dreaming

Lucid dreaming (LD) is a type of a dream in which dreamers are aware that they are dreaming. The consciousness obtained during LD is referred to as bimodal because it contains features of primary consciousness such as perception, emotions, and secondary consciousness such as self-reflection, ability of abstract thinking and metacognition.

The aim of this study is to characterize lucid dreaming and indicate its neural correlates based on polysomnographic and neuroimaging methods. So far, few studies have been conducted in this field, of which the results do not provide a coherent picture of the brain activity associated with this phenomenon. The results of electrophysiological studies indicate that lucid dreaming compared to non-lucid dreaming (nLD) is associated with increased power in higher bands: the gamma band in the frontal cortex and beta in the parietal cortex, and a power decrease in low frequencies of delta and theta bands. Neuroimaging studies also show stronger activation of the brain areas associated with the fronto-parietal network, in particular the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex or the precuneus during LD in comparison to nLD. The activity of these areas is closely related to self-consciousness processes, metacognition, insight as well as emotion regulation, which could indicate why during LD there is not only realization that we are dreaming but also cognitive or emotional control of the dream content. However, lucid dreaming is a phenomenon that has been studied recently and because of many uncertainties resulting from methodological difficulties, new research is needed to confirm the current results.