Lucid dreamers wanted for a motor learning experiment (non-lucid dreamers can participate too!)

Dear dream enthusiasts,

We, lucid dream researchers at Heidelberg University in Germany, are starting a new online study on motor learning in lucid dreams and are looking for participants.

Lucid dreams are dreams in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming and can influence dream content.

Firstly, we are looking for frequent lucid dreamers (who have lucid dreams a few times a month or more often). They will be asked to practice a simple motor task (finger tapping) in their lucid dream for as long as they can.

Further, we will be looking for other participants who are not necessary lucid dreamers. They will be assigned to one of three our other groups: (1) physical practice group, (2) mental practice group or (3) no practice group. Participants in physical or mental practice groups will be asked to practice the motor task either physically or just in their minds after awakening at a certain time during the night. Participants in the no practice group will not need to do any practice.

All participants will be asked to do a brief pre-test of the motor task in the evening and a brief post-test in the morning.

If you are interested to participate, please fill an initial questionnaire: **Link Removed**. Further information will be sent by email.

Please note that initially we are recruiting frequent lucid dreamers. Participants in other three groups will start the experiment a bit later (however you can register and fill the initial questionnaire right now, we will just send you the information later!)

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

Thank you very much for your help in advancing lucid dream research! It is very much needed and appreciated!

Tadas Stumbrys
Heidelberg University
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: **Link Removed**

What type of equipment / sensors do you have access to for monitoring sleep?

Hi IAmCoder,
This is a field study where participants sleep at home and we are not monitoring or recording their sleep.

Yeah, I gathered that. Was just wondering...

How is the experiment going? Is there still time to join?

Yes, the experiment is still ongoing and the participants are very much needed!

Dear (lucid) dreamers,

We are still looking for participants for the study above!

Only with your active participation and support we can advance the scientific understanding of lucid dreaming and make it more widely known both to the scientific community and general public. Therefore your help and active participation is very much needed and appreciated!

P.S. Recently we experienced some technical problems with one of the servers, so if the link for registration does not work, please use this one: **Link Removed**

Thank you!

Hi, are there any plans to run a study like this on motor learning in lucid dreams in a sleep lab? I understand the difficulties and ridiculous time requirements associated with such a study, but it's got to be worth it to control some variables. If you obtained results similar to those from the pilot study by Erlacher and Schredl (2010) in a lab, it would be awesome.

Also, if you have time to answer, I've got a query that came up in a discussion on the above paper. What do you think is it about lucid dreaming that would make it a more effective form of practice than standard mental rehearsal? We thought it might be to do with different mechanisms of inhibition of movement. In waking mental rehearsal, we visualise performing the movement and if possible, imagine the proprioceptive feedback. But crucially, we consciously inhibit actual movement. In dreams, since we're fully immersed in a mentally-simulated reality, with a mentally-simulated body, we can execute movements. However it is still simulated cognitively (like mental rehearsal). As well as I understand it, some structure or mechanism in the brain stem inhibits the passage of efferent motor signals, but in the cortex, everything movement-related up to that point in the process has happened as it would when we are awake. The neural activations in dreams should therefore be more similar to actual waking practice than mental rehearsal. Because movement inhibition in waking practice is conscious (and presumably has a cortical origin - further upstream than the brainstem), activations might be less similar to real practice. Do you think this explanation makes sense? Thanks for indulging me!

Hi J.D.,

Actually the present study was initially planned as a sleep laboratory experiment :) However, due to the difficulties with getting frequent lucid dreamers into the sleep lab, having them to lucid dream and accomplish the task while sleeping in the lab, after some time we decided to discontinue and redesign it as an online study. Otherwise it would just take too much time and in this case we have some deadlines we have to meet...

Yes, I think you are right with the explanation. Or at least it corresponds with my own view :) While mental practice (MP) in wakefulness and lucid dream practice (LDP) are both cognitive simulations (with movement inhibition), the perception in these two cases are somewhat different. During MP you are only imagining a movement, while during LDP you are performing the movement just as you would do physically when awake. There is a nice illustration from LaBerge of this difference with circle eye-tracking: Dreamed, Imagined, and Actual Eye-tracking. So LDP is more closer to actual practice than MP and it should elicit more similar brain activation pattern, including areas that are not only involved in planning the movement (supplementary motor area, premotor cortex), but also in its execution (motor cortex M1, which is usually not activated during MP). But this is a hypothesis which has to be tested, of course :)

Thanks for the reply! I can appreciate the threat of looming deadlines. That LaBerge and Zimbardo paper is a good one, it came up too. I suppose it hints that dreams might be quite similar to waking perception, at least as far as vision is concerned.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by skolax

Dear dream enthusiasts,

We, lucid dream researchers at Heidelberg University in Germany, are starting a new online study on motor learning in lucid dreams and are looking for participants.

Lucid dreams are dreams in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming and can influence dream content.

Firstly, we are looking for frequent lucid dreamers (who have lucid dreams a few times a month or more often). They will be asked to practice a simple motor task (finger tapping) in their lucid dream for as long as they can.

Further, we will be looking for other participants who are not necessary lucid dreamers. They will be assigned to one of three our other groups: (1) physical practice group, (2) mental practice group or (3) no practice group. Participants in physical or mental practice groups will be asked to practice the motor task either physically or just in their minds after awakening at a certain time during the night. Participants in the no practice group will not need to do any practice.

All participants will be asked to do a brief pre-test of the motor task in the evening and a brief post-test in the morning.

If you are interested to participate, please fill an initial questionnaire: **Link Removed**. Further information will be sent by email.

Please note that initially we are recruiting frequent lucid dreamers. Participants in other three groups will start the experiment a bit later (however you can register and fill the initial questionnaire right now, we will just send you the information later!)

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

Thank you very much for your help in advancing lucid dream research! It is very much needed and appreciated!

Tadas Stumbrys
Heidelberg University
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: **Link Removed**

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How wonderful!!
Do you work with MelSchaedlich?
I wish you loads of participants and convincing results!!

This finger tapping in their lucid dream for as long as they can sounds a bit deterring, though.
What is it exactly, that you are supposed to dream-practise and for how long at least, for it making a countable night?

Also - when I do this test before going to sleep and do not LD - I had a hidden physical practice then as well, I wonder.
It probably takes several nights to get such a practice LD up and running - how about the influence of the tests as practice?

Please explain it a bit more!

I am just starting out - so maybe I´ll have several in a month.

If it would be fine with you - I could try my luck on it - being a beginner, but with some first successes.
But I do on the other hand not want to spend too much time in LDs on it - esp. at the moment, where all is more or less fresh.

If there is a way, how you see, it could maybe work anyway - please pm me!
I would be delighted to help!
But I hope there will be others, who are really experienced taking part.
Great you do this!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by StephL

But I do on the other hand not want to spend too much time in LDs on it - esp. at the moment, where all is more or less fresh.

If there is a way, how you see, it could maybe work anyway - please pm me!
I would be delighted to help!
But I hope there will be others, who are really experienced taking part.
Great you do this!!

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This would be my primary concern as well. My LDs are so valuable still to me but I am interested in any response to Steph's query above. Those who LD at will and are looking for things to do in their LDs might be interested as well.

Oh - and - maybe you could copy-paste the initial questionnaire in here, since the link to another forum got removed, please?

Hi StephL (and fogelbise),

Yes, we are colleagues with Melanie Schädlich :)

You would need to practice a particular sequence of finger taps (tap your fingers in a particular order as quickly and as accurately as you can). The practice will be in 30s blocks (with 30s rest blocks in between). Yes, I agree that the phrase "as long as you can" might look a bit deterring, but it would be great if you could practice a few blocks. Though even 1 or 2 periods of 30 s practice might be sufficient for making it "a countable night". It is a single-night study, but if you are not successful, it is possible to repeat the experiment a few times (you would be given a difference sequence to practice each night, so no learning effects from a previous night).

Unfortunatelly the DV forum admin removed links to the questionnaire, arguing that I am trying to divert DV users to a competitive website... So just please send me an email to [email protected] and I will send you the link to the questionnaire.

The data collection is already approaching the end, so please hurry up! (Only a week is left!)

Thank you very much for your help!

Ah - okay - thank you for clarifying - now I understand it all better.
Except actually, why you can´t copy paste this questionnaire without linking up.
I think, I am not good enough to do something in the coming week - but I will e-mail anyway.

Also - I included a link in here into my sig - so maybe I´ll reach a bit more people like this - or ask them right out.
Once more all the luck with finding subjects and with getting valuable results - and greetings to Mel!
Attachment 6061

Thank you StephL! It is an interactive questionnaire which can not be simply pasted :)

This sounds really interesting. :) I'm a frequent lucid dreamer and would really like to participate; I should be able to do it within a week as long as it's not too complex or difficult...even if it is, I can try. I'll send an e-mail, too.

I am VERY interested in helping. I am not a very frequent lucid dreamer however. I have recently returned to this hobby(I took all focus from it about a year or two ago because of school stress) but I am back. I haven't had the success I once had, whereas I'd have about 5-10 lucids a month, but I do have them at a respectable rate now. I've had four in the past two weeks so I'm assuming I'm almost back in business. I'd love to participate in this, but I'll leave the judgment of that up to you. And greetings from America!

I mailed skolax and thank you for answering more or less instantly!

And then I filled in the questionnaire - didn´t take very long, and I guess, that is valuable in itself - sine there will be a nothing-doing-group and an imagining group and a physically practising group - not only LDers will be of use.

In so far - all can take part!

:yumdumdoodledum: