Dream Characters

A couple of years ago, I wrote an introductory article on the topic of dream characters - if you would like to read this post, please click on this title (article will open in a new window): 'An introduction to dream characters'. The order in which you read the articles is not important.

For me, meeting dream characters - either in a normal non-lucid or a lucid dream - is one of the most fascinating aspects of dreaming. Robert Waggoner refers to dream characters as 'dream figures' - suggesting that instead of being fictional beings who merely exist within our dream narratives. they are important aspects of our psyche who can provide us with deep and meaningful insight into the meaning of our dreams and our subconscious, even if they seem to be symbolic.

Often, dream characters will be people we know or are familiar with in our waking life - family, friends or celebrities/public figures. How often certain recurrent dream characters appear in our dreams may be determined by the level of contact we have with such persons in our waking hours - so someone we see/speak to/think about everyday is more likely to frequently appear in our dreams. 

Sometimes day residue (the aspects of our recent waking life which are reflected in the content of our dreams, perhaps in a symbolic or altered form) causes us to dream of someone we may have had a fleeting waking interaction with - such as noticing them post on social media, or seeing a public figure mentioned in a news article, or watching a movie/listening to music, triggering the appearance of that celebrity in our dream. On occasions, we may not even be aware that we have seen/heard of that person, because the waking experience didn't seem significant enough for us to think deeply about it until after the dream.

While dream characters are often assumed to reflect an aspect/characteristic of our self, or may simply be the result of day residue, sometimes we dream of random public figures/celebrities without any clear trigger or influence. To interpret what the appearance of this dream character means, consider what associations you make in relation to this figure - what traits/characteristics/qualities/values/behaviours do you associate with them? The same exercise can be used when we dream of fictional characters.

Some dream characters may be 'stock' stereotypes - such as 'boss', 'leader', 'teacher', 'enemy', 'lover' etc - so they are not necessarily identifiable people we recognise from real life, but we can ascertain their 'role' or 'purpose'. Again, consider what traits/characteristics/qualities/values/behaviours you associate with persons linked to these roles and then ask yourself how these relate to your waking life - if you dream of a 'boss' dream character, does this reflect a waking situation linked with your career or employment? Or is there some other aspect of self/waking life you can link to the appearance of this standard dream character?

What/Who are Dream Characters?
This seems like a strange question - dream characters are just the people who appear in our dreams! But there are many theories about the reason why certain dream characters populate our dreams and what they may represent. 

The most common theory is that dream characters are manifestations/projections of some aspect of ourselves - our subconscious or our personality. Dream character are not necessarily human, although often dream characters take on the form of people known to the dreamer in waking reality. 

When dream characters are based on real people known to the dreamer, often their behaviour reflects what we expect in real life, because much of our dream content is drawn from our waking experiences. However, sometimes, dream characters may act oddly or completely differently to what we expect, which can be a powerful dreamsign used to trigger lucidity or at least make us question the nature of the dream. 

Sometimes dream characters might be composites of people we know or are familiar with. This may be confusing (we may ask ourselves 'who is this?') or we may recognise that the dream character is a composite, but identify who they are supposed to be in the dream. 

Shadows & Anima/Animus
Some dream literature refers to 'Dream Guides'. These can be separated into sub-categories of dream characters. 

Shadows
Shadows are the 'inner nemesis' of the dreamer - this of the metaphorical 'devil' on the shoulder, who is able to whisper into the ear of it's host, and sabotage plans and cause personal chaos, even when the individual knows better or has other intentions. This is how Shadows are depicted. Some oneironauts believe that the personal Shadow connects to the collective Shadow of all people, and therefore should be handled carefully when they appear in a dream as they represent 'evil' or the 'dark side'. 

Shadows are therefore seen as the dark elements of the psyche which we are unaware of - they should be conscious and controlled by the ego, but are not. These elements of self might be projected as a distinct dream character, but some say that the Shadow has many personalities and guises which it can hide behind. These are often thought to reflect the stereotypes, perceptions and fears of the dreamer. Oneironauts who believe in this interpretation, suggest that when the ego becomes overinflated (hubris), the nemesis has more capacity, because the conscious awareness of the dreamer is overshadowed. This can lead the Shadow to influence the dreamer in negative ways and this represents the self-sabotaging aspect of the psyche, that acts against the best interests of the dreamer.

Apparently, the Shadow is made up of the positive and negative aspects of the self which are undeveloped and have become split off from the ego and may affect the relationship between the ego and the subconscious.

Anima/Animus
The Anima/Animus are derived from various traditional cultural norms, which emerged in an era where there were much more strictly defined gender identities and roles - women being linked to the feminine, nurturing, maternal, intuitive. cooperative, sensitive and domestic; and men to the masculine, aggressive, decisive, independent and commercial. In order to comply with these gender ideals, we supposedly subsume conflicting aspects of the self, and these can be reflected in our dreams. Therefore, while our physical gender may be well-developed (because we are taught how to identify and fit into the gender roles expected of us by society),  we may be out of touch with the other aspects of our self. This theory of dream characters seems grossly out of synch with our modern understanding of gender and sexuality. It does not take into account non-heterosexual cis-gendered identities or gender fluidity and therefore appears to be outdated, normative and limited.

Anima/Animus are depicted as the middleman/woman between our egos and our subconscious and are sometimes referred to as a 'face of the soul' (I would prefer 'face of the psyche' given my particular worldview). They are the face of the subconscious mind. 

Anima represent the 'ideal' female face of the male dreamer, and Animus represents the 'ideal' male face of the female dreamer, allowing the dreamer to connect to their latent femininity/masculinity. Their purpose is to spark personal development and unify the conscious and subconscious aspects of self. 

Dreamers may find the dream characters representing the Anima/Animus attractive, because they represent the opposite sex which is unconscious within the dreamer's self, but have the potential to become conscious. The Anima is the female sub-personality in men and the Animus is the male sub-personality in women.  

The Anima/Animus dream characters have something the dreamer wants and needs in order to feel fully complete and balanced. Often, the Anima/Animus presents as our ideal (heterosexual) partner - the personification of feminine or masculine ideals which when recognised as part of our psyche, create a union and leads us to our higher, deeper selves. 

Typically, in a dream the Anima/Animus will not normally engage in sex with the dreamer - they are distinct from the types of dream characters a dreamer may find themselves having sexual activity with in a dream, although there may be a strong sexual attraction to the Anima/Animus. 

Summonsing a Dream Character

Many lucid dreamers seek to summons a dream character into their dreams - the dream character may be someone known or identifiable to the dreamer in real life, or it may be a creation of their imagination. However, sometimes dream characters fail to be summons into a dream, or may appear transformed or somehow different to expectations. At times, a benign dream character may appear nightmarish or ugly. This may be a conflict between what the conscious wants and what the subconscious is projecting. The advice of some oneironauts - such a Waggoner - is to allow your dream characters to be what they wish and letting them choose how they interact with you on their own terms, without trying  to interfere or exert concious control. 

My preferred method of summonsing a dream character - either known to me, or created for the purposes of the dream, is to expect that they will be just out of sight - round a corner or behind a door. I use my mind's eye to picture them just out of my sight. The key is to manifest a strong expectation. I sometimes call out their name to check if they are behind the wall/door yet - and sometimes they reply, letting me know they are ready to meet me.

If you are imagining the dream character just round a corner, out of sight and have manifested a strong expectation that they will appear, you can walk around the corner and often, they will be waiting for you. If you are imagining them behind a door, treat the door as a 'portal' to the dream character. Manifest the expectation, as above, and then open the door. You might try to reach into the doorway to 'pull' your dream character through to your side. Additionally, using a mirror as a portal can have the same effect. 

Waggoner recommends asking questions of the 'awareness behind the dream' when it comes to summonsing dream characters. This simply means calling out to the dream with your wish or desire - for example you might call out: 'Show me my dream guide' or 'Show me myself' or 'Show me my secret fantasy'. This allows your subconscious to produce dream characters with a purpose.

You might to paint a picture - this can be done using your mind's eye (or imagination!) - or you may actually use your hand to 'paint' a picture of the dream character you wish to summons. Using this method to form a vivid 'image' of the dream character may help them actually appear in the dream.

Another way of summonsing a dream character is to morph something which is already present in the dream - a different dream character or an object. Use your imagination to will this character/object into morphing into your chosen dream character. 

Telling Dream Characters they are not Real

Often, I have tried to tell my dream characters - ones based on people I know in my real waking life, or ones I have created for the purposes of the lucid dream - and the dream characters refuse to accept that they are in my dream. I have tried to 'prove' it to them - for example, by performing a reality check (which sometimes fails, even though I am lucid) or doing something which is only possible in a dream. Sometimes, my dream characters still refuse to admit that they are in a dream and try to convince me that we are in waking reality. 

If you do manage to convince your dream character that you are in a dream, it can often result in them changing somehow - in some circumstances, they may change in appearance, or they may become aggressive or undergo another drastic behaviour change. 

Are Dream Characters Rational Beings?
A phenomenological study by Paul Tholey, 'Consciousness and abilities of dream characters observed during lucid dreaming' (1989), Perception & Motor Skills,  68(2), 567- 578 aimed to test whether dream characters were rational and conscious beings and what types of cognitive accomplishments they were capable of. Tholey selected 9 male subjects, who were instructed to set various different tasks to a dream character in a lucid dream - such as finding rhymes, solving puzzles or arithmetic. The study found that the dream characters who willingly performed the tasks were least successful at arithmetic. Nothing in the study contradicted Tholey's hypothesis that dream characters possess a specific form of consciousness, and it was concluded that in lucid dream therapy, the dreamer should engage with dream characters as if they are rational beings. 

Dream Characters & Sex
The important thing to remember is that sex dreams are rarely about the actual act of sex itself. Dream very rarely have a superficial, simple meaning, but are multi-layered, condensed and symbolised in many different ways which need to be unlocked and decoded before their true (potential) meaning can be deciphered. 

Some dream analysts suggest that sex dreams are the union of two conflicting aspects of your own psyche. Dream characters are typically assumed to be subconscious projections of parts of your own identity or ego. I do agree to some extent with this notion, but I also think that sometimes a dream character who is based on someone you know in real-life, is just that - a representation of that person, or at least your subconscious perception or attitude towards them. This does not suggest that a sex dream involving someone you actually know in real-life means that you want to have sex with them. The sexual act may represent something completely different - a union, or a power-struggle or a assimilation of characteristics associated with that dream character, for example. There is no one definite interpretation, just a range of possibilities.


In lucid dreams is it very common for a dreamer to approach a desirable dream character only for them to transform into a hideous, repellent being. I interpret this to be a sign that what you are faced with on the surface (beauty. desirability) may actually be very different to the realisation of what is hidden beneath, once the layers are stripped away. Often we have a very different perception of a person who we admire from a distance from what we actually 'see' when we become intimate with that person. In lucid dreaming, experiences are streamlined, condensed and distilled into a more symbolic narrative - so subconscious awareness that a person may appear superficially 'perfect' only to be revealed as flawed or 'ugly on the inside' is projected onto the lucid dream sex act. 

Interacting with Dream Characters
Here is a list of suggestions for ways in which you could experiment with interacting with dream characters in a lucid dream:

• Ask your dream character a fundamental question, such as 'Who am I?'/'Tell me something about myself'? or 'What do I want?'/'Why do I feel like this?' - the answer received will come from your subconscious and may potentially reveal some 'truth' about yourself or offer enlightenment or deeper understanding on a certain issue or aspect of self. Even if the answer from your dream characters appears to be meaningless, it is still a fun exercise
• Interview your dream characters - again, this exercise sheds light on the inner workings of your mind can be seen as a 'conversation' with your subconscious
• Attempt to summons or transform a dream character (see above for instructions)
• Try to meet your dream guide/spirit guide in a dream
• Attempt to establish intimacy or romantic interaction with an attractive dream character
• Ask a dream character if they are real - or tell them that they are just a dream character in your dream and witness their response!
• Ask a dream character to take you on an adventure - and allow them to take control. It will be exciting and fascinating to see where you are taken and what activities your dream character will involve you in!

The 'Reality' of Dreaming: Why isn't Every Dream Lucid?

Dreams are the ultimate form of fantasy - we are so immersed in the landscape and narrative of our dreams that we accept them as our reality while we are in the dream world. Unless we are lucid dreaming, we only identify the dream as distinct from our ordinary perception of conscious reality when we awaken and start to compare the dream to what we know to be true of waking life.

In my time spent on online lucid dreaming forums, I stumble across many anecdotal claims from oneironauts who claim they can experience several lucid dreams per night, every night; or alternatively, complain that they lucid dream 'too much'. I find it very hard to believe that these people experience lucidity so frequently, especially given that many of them claim that they learned to lucid dream through lucid dreaming induction methods (so, were not natural lucid dreamers) and their lucidity continues even when they are not actively trying to induce a lucid dream. 

I am not suggesting that it is wholly impossible for someone to experience a lucid dream every night - Perma-Lucid Dreamers account for a very small fraction of those who can lucid dream. It's just not the norm for someone to suddenly start lucid dreaming on a nightly basis just because they averted their mind to the desire to learn how to become lucid. Often Perma-Lucid Dreamers are not aware their dreams are lucid, or different from those experienced by the general population - because they do not have a comparison by which to recognise this.

This led me to research why we don't lucid dream every time we fall asleep. For new readers, a lucid dream is one in which you are consciously aware that you are dreaming while in the dream state - it may be possible to change or control what happens in the dream, but this is not necessarily true of all lucid dreams. I have many lucid dreams where I cannot control anything, and all my attempts are frustrated or impossible.

In order to address why we don't lucid dream every night, I decided to read up on Depth Theory - the study of the unconscious, interpersonal aspects of human experience, which focuses on the phenomenon of dreaming as well as complexes and archetypes. Many Depth Theorists follow Jungian psychology, which addresses the concepts of the psyche, human development, personality formation, and individuation. Individuation is a process of bringing our unconscious potential into a concrete living reality - it is a process which helps to secure a bridge between an individual and the unconscious, as well as the individual and his/her wider social community. By incorporating both an inner and outer exploration, a person can discover a more potent sense of meaning and purpose in life. Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) believed that psychological distress is a result of an imbalance within the individual that often is experienced as an alienation from the deeper personality - known as the 'Self'. Jungian psychotherapy seeks to restore the individual’s connection to the Self. This effort can be achieved through the therapeutic relationship, dream interpretation, active imagination, and work with expressive therapies.

This theory suggests that in order for our dreams to provide us with a form of unconscious therapy while we sleep, we must be passive within the dream state. The dream can only help us to achieve catharsis, healing or personality integration if we accept the reality of the dream as genuine. The brain is almost hardwired to avoid lucidity in the dream state - parts of the brain that we use during our waking lives, such as the logical, fact-checking part of the brain - are deactivated during sleep, to allow us to dream freely and unconsciously. One theory is that we need to accept the dream as reality so as not to arouse ourselves into wakefulness. 

The brain is responsible for interpreting sensory perceptions - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. However, it is also able to process other information - such as imagination, dreams, hallucinations etc. When asleep and dreaming, the brain does not tend to discriminate between the types of input it receives and therefore, the brain does not alert the dreamer to the fact they are dreaming, rather than experiencing waking reality because the conscious part of the brain is switched off. The brain operates in such a manner that it actually creates false memories to explain the dream content and fool us further into accepting it as reality. One way of becoming lucid is to train yourself (using cognitive methods) to identify dreamsigns - the bizarre or impossible events of a dream which could only occur if you were dreaming - and confirm you are in a dream state by performing a reality check. But even for seasoned lucid dreamers, this isn't always as straightforward as it sounds - essentially, when we teach ourselves to induce a Dream-Initiated Lucid Dream (DILD), we are hacking our brains and overriding what our brains are biologically programmed to do.

There is another explanation for why not all our dreams are lucid - from the perspective of Developmental Psychology. This holds that when we were foetuses in the womb, we experienced dreams - before we were even aware of the laws of physical reality and logic. These foundational, inuetro dreams may leave impressions on our subconscious, which is a reason why we do not necessarily challenge the reality of the dream and become lucid in all the dreams we experience in later life, even after we attain knowledge as to how our waking life affects our subconscious dream world. 

Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) studied children’s dreams and described how children’s acceptance of dreams gradually change from a firm belief of dreams as reality to an awareness that dreams are just a 'story' inside their minds while asleep. This explains why we may begin our sleeping life believing that dreams are real because we are born dreaming. Newborn babies are in the REM sleep state for an average 8 hours per day. REM is the sleep period considered most favorable and fertile for ordinary (non-lucid) dreaming. The dream world is, in many ways, our first and natural world, and the waking world with all of its rules comes later.

Why Do We Accept the Bizarre Reality of Dreams?

This leads me to an interlinked subject - why do we accept our dreams as real while we are dreaming them?

When addressing the altered reality of our dreams, we might look to the research of Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) who also believed that dreams were a form of therapy or emotional healing process. In order for us to resolve an inner conflict or obtain wish fulfilment, we must believe in the reality of the dream, and therefore, in the dream state critical thinking and doubt are repressed so that we can fully believe in the dream. 

Psychologist Allan Hobson adopts a neurological approach to dreaming, which challenges the idea that dreams have any intrinsic meaning to us. He claims that dreams are simply makeshift and inconsequential narratives, stemming from random brain activity while we sleep. The dreamer makes the best of a bad script, and the result can be nonsensical or bizarre. Due to the fact that areas of the brain that sustain working memory are weakened while we sleep, logic is compromised during dreams. Hence, the dreamer accepts these bizarre situations and transitions in time and space as real.

Theories of Dreaming

Here are some key theories as to why we dream and why we might accept the reality of the dreamstate: 

1. We Dream to Practice Responses to Threatening Situations

This is the 'Threat Simulation Theory' propounded by Antti Revonsuo, a Finnish cognitive scientist, who produced evidence to show that our amygdala (the area of the brain responsible for the 'fight-or-flight' response) fires more than normal during REM sleep  In REM sleep, the brain functions in a similar way to when it's specifically threatened for survival during waking life. In addition, the part of the brain which practices motor activity (running, fighting) fires increasingly during REM sleep, even though the limbs are still due to muscle atonia/sleep paralysis. Therefore, Revonsuo and other evolutionary theorists argue that in dreams, we are actually rehearsing fight-and-flight responses, even though our limbs are not actually physically moving during sleep. Revonsuo believes that dreams are an evolutionary adaptation - we dream in order to rehearse behaviours of self-defense in the safety of night-time isolation which prepares us for actual waking situations where me may need to utilise these skills for survival. This explains why mammals (specifically cats) - who also experience REM sleep and dreams - have been shown to 'act out' hunting dreams when the part of the brain responsible for REM muscle atonia/sleep paralysis has been deactivated or removed. Hunting is a means of survival for a cat in the wild - and seeing the acting out of physical movements associated with hunting and catching prey allows us to identify the possible content of the cat's dream. As modern humans, our dreams tend to reflect waking life concerns and emotions - we might see these are modern versions of 'threats' to our survival given that the majority of people living in the developed world no longer need to rely on hunting and gathering as a means of survival, nor need to physically protect ourselves from predators.

2. Dreams Create Wisdom

If we remembered every image of our waking lives, it would clog our memories. So, dreams sort through memories, to determine which ones to retain and which to lose. Matt Wilson of the MIT Center for Learning and Memory argues this perspective. In one study, Wilson put rats in mazes during the day, and recorded the patterns of neural activity as the rats negotiated the maze. When he watched the rats enter REM sleep, he saw that the same neuron patterns fired as those which had fired at choice turning points in the maze. In other words, he saw that the rats were dreaming of important junctures in their day. Wilson argues that sleep is the process through which we separate the memories worth encoding in long-term memory from those worth losing. Sleep turns a flood of daily information into what we call 'wisdom' - and we can use this acquired intelligence in real waking decision-making.

3. Dreaming is Like Defragmenting your Brain's Hard Drive

Francis Crick (who co-discovered the structure of DNA) and Graeme Mitchison put forth a famously controversial theory about dreams in 1983 when they wrote that 'we dream in order to forget'. This means that the brain is like a machine which connects its data in certain ways (obsessing, defending or retaining), and that those thinking pathways might not be the most beneficial for us. When we sleep, the brain fires much more randomly and this random scouring for new connections allows us to loosen certain pathways and create new, more advantageous ones. Dreaming is a shuffling of old connections that allows us to keep the important connections and erase the inefficient links - analogous to the defragmentation of a computer's hard drive. Dreams are a reordering of connections to streamline the system.

4. Dreams are a Form of Psychotherapy

For many theorists (including Freud) dream are principally a means by which to confront difficult and surprising emotions and deal with those emotions in a new way. Ernest Hartmann, a doctor at Tufts, focuses on the emotional learning which happens in dreams, developing the theory that dreaming puts our difficult emotions into a visual language. In dreams, we deal with emotional content in a safe place, making connections that we would not make if left to our more critical or defensive waking brains. In this sense, dreaming is like a form of psychotherapy - we think through emotional stuff in a less rational and defensive frame of mind and are able to come up with solutions which may not be available to the conscious mind. Through that process, we also come to accept truths we might otherwise repress. 

5. The Absence of Theory

Others - such as Hobson, above - argue that dreams have no meaning at all - they are merely the random firings of an unconscious brain. The mind is still 'functioning' insofar as it's producing images, but there's no conscious sense behind the narrative. Perhaps it's only consciousness itself that wants to see some deep meaning in our brains at all times and therefore our waking brain projects meaning onto the meaningless dream content in order to explain our experience of dreaming.

Normal Non-Lucid Dreams v Lucid Dreams 

- A Neuroscientific Comparison

In order to understand the difference between normal dreams and lucid dreams, we can identify neurological differences between these distinct brain states. This sheds some light on why we might accept normal, non-lucid dreams as reality and do not question events in the same way we would if awake or in a lucid dream. A very interesting journal article tackled this precise theme - see Dresler et al, 'Neural Correlates of Dream Lucidity Obtained from Contrasting Lucid versus Non-Lucid REM Sleep: A Combined EEG/fMRI Case Study' (2012) Sleep 35(7), 1017 - 1020. I have summarised the findings of the study, below for the purposes of discussion:

In REM sleep we experience the most vivid and intense forms of dreaming - however, these dreams (when non-lucid) are deficient in reflective thought and metacognition. Instead the internally generated perceptions and emotions experienced during dreaming typically show many cognitive peculiarities, with a bizarre dream narrative full of gaps, delusional thought, and a complete lack of insight into the fact that we are dreaming. These cognitive constraints (i.e. lack of awareness or rationality) are thought to be related to the neural activation patterns associated with REM sleep, particularly deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

In contrast to normal dreaming, lucid dreaming denotes a rare state of sleep comprising cognitive features of both waking and dreaming. During lucid dreams, subjects become aware of their dreaming state, have full access to memory, and are sometimes able to volitionally control dreamed actions. Although standard polysomnographic criteria of REM sleep are maintained (and REM sleep muscle atonia - commonly referred to as sleep paralysis - prevents overt motor behaviour), lucid dreamers are able to communicate their state by predefined volitional eye movements, clearly discernable in the electrooculogram. 

Lucid dreaming can be trained and has been successfully utilized for the treatment of nightmares or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, neural changes which accompany dream lucidity, and their role in the amelioration of dream disorders, are not yet well understood. When compared to non-lucid REM sleep, lucid dreaming is associated with increased 40-Hz activity (known as 'gamma brainwaves'), and increased coherence in frontal regions, as has recently been shown by quantitative EEG. Neuroimaging data, delineating the neural correlates of lucid dreaming, have not yet been obtained and analysed. While in a later study Dresler and his colleagues analysed how the skill of lucid dreaming served as a tool for tracing specific motor activity in dreams, the current study aimed to reveal the neural correlates of lucidity per se by contrasting lucid vs non-lucid REM sleep using a combined EEG/fMRI approach.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that human REM sleep is related to characteristic patterns of regional brain activity - during REM sleep, neural activity in the brain stem, thalamus, amygdala, and extrastriate temporo-occipital cortices increases, while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the precuneus show deactivation. 

This specific pattern of neural activity has been proposed to reflect the visual hallucinations, emotional intensifications, and cognitive abnormalities typically experienced in dreams. In contrast, lucid dreaming is characterized by a regaining of higher cognitive capabilities, eventually leading to the awareness of the dreaming state. 

Recent quantitative EEG data have shown that this 'waking' intellectual clarity is paralleled by neural activations in frontal and frontolateral regions. Likewise, PET data show cognitive control in dreams to be associated with activation of frontal cortex components.

In the current study, Dresler and his colleagues present neuroimaging data showing lucid dreaming to be associated with neural activations in a specific network of cortical regions. In line with the study of Voss et al (see 'Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming' (2008) Sleep, 32, 1191 - 200), during lucid dreaming the researchers observed increased activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thought to underlie a wide range of higher cognitive capacities, as evidenced also by the dysexecutive syndrome seen in patients with lesions in this region. In particular, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was associated with self-focused metacognitive evaluation. 

While in normal dreams, working memory is strongly impaired, activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (in combination with parietal lobules, which were also found to be activated during lucid dreaming) may reflect working memory demands related to task performance in the study. Further, there was observed increased activation in bilateral frontopolar areas, which have been related to the processing of internal states - i.e. the evaluation of one's own thoughts and feelings.

The strongest increase in activation during lucid compared to non-lucid REM sleep was observed in the precuneus - a brain region which has been implicated in self-referential processing, such as first-person perspective and experience of agency/autonomy. While in normal dreams, attention is often hyper-associatively driven by the (pseudo-)external dream scenery, lucid dreaming is - by definition - characterized by a reflection on one's own state of mind.

Interestingly, Dresler et al found activation in the bilateral cuneus and occipitotemporal cortices. These areas are part of the ventral stream of visual processing, which is involved in several aspects of conscious awareness in visual perception. While these activations seem initially puzzling, since non-lucid dreams are also characterized by vivid dream imagery - they are in line with anecdotal reports of lucid dreamers who state that lucidity is associated with an exceptional brightness and visual clarity of the dream scenery.

While lucid dreaming is an intriguing phenomenon in its own regard, it can also serve as a tool for the study of dream disorders - for example, nightmares and PTSD. Neurocognitive models of disturbed dreaming emphasize a hyper-responsivity of the amygdala in nightmare generation, coupled with a failure of medial prefrontal regions to dampen this activation. Lateral prefrontal regions have been shown capable to influence amygdala function through connections to the medial prefrontal cortex. Increased lateral prefrontal activation during lucid dreaming therefore fits well with the therapeutic effects of lucidity training on recurrent nightmares. 

If lucid dreaming can also be utilized in the treatment of other dream disorders - for example, terrifying hypnagogic hallucinations, or pathological dream vivification, is an open question that warrants further investigation and research studies. In summary, the study by Dressler et al found that, in line with recent EEG data, lucid dreaming is associated with a reactivation of several areas normally deactivated during REM sleep. This pattern of activity can explain the recovery of reflective cognitive capabilities that are the hallmark of waking life and also lucid dreaming.

Gaming & Lucid Dreaming (Instructions for Game Induced Lucid Dreams - GILD)

Video gaming may provide gamers with extraordinary self-awareness and control in their dreams, according to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. Both video games and dreams are forms of alternative realities. Gackenbach states: ‘If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice [for lucid dreaming]. Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams’.

Gaming simultaneously targets and augments several abilities which are crucial to success in lucid dream induction. First, gamers develop better concentration and focus, by engaging in a goal-oriented task amongst many distractions. Secondly, gamers have a highly developed sense of ‘proprioception’, or knowing where their avatar is in relationship to the game matrix. Gaming appears to develop field independence - a psychological trait that has already been correlated with high levels of lucidity. Finally, gamers tend to have a positive attitude and excellent self-esteem after playing, a trait that bleeds over into other aspects of your life, such as alertness and awareness levels.

Gackenbach first became interested in video games in the 1990s, having already studied the phenomenon of lucid dreaming. The last decade of game-related research has since yielded several surprises, although the findings represent suggestive associations rather than definitive proof. Gackenbach presented her research, as a featured speaker at the Sixth Annual Games for Health Conference in Boston in 2010.

Several intriguing parallels between lucid dreams and video games first emerged when Gackenbach examined past research on games - both lucid dreamers and gamers seemed to have better spatial skills and were less prone to motion sickness. The two groups have also demonstrated a high level of focus or concentration, whether honed through lucidity-training activities, such as meditation, or through hours spent gaming. These correlations encouraged Gackenbach to survey the dreams of both non-gamers and hardcore gamers, beginning with two studies published in 2006. She prepared by conducting larger surveys in-class and online to get a sense of where to focus questions.

The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report (a) lucid dreams; (b) observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies i.e. in third-person perspective; (c) and dream control that allowed people to actively influence or change their dream worlds. All of these qualities are suggestive of watching or controlling the action of a video-game character. A second study tried to narrow down the uncertainties by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before – this focused more on gamers. The study found that lucid dreams were common, but that the gamers never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves. The gamers also frequently flipped between a first person perspective/view from within the body and a third person perspective/view of themselves from outside - except never with the calm detachment of a distant witness.

Gackenbach told LiveScience: ‘The first time we simply asked people how often they had lucid dreams, looking back over their life and making judgment calls. That's open to all kinds of bias, [such as] certain memory biases, self-reported biases’. Gackenbach eventually replicated her findings about lucid dreaming and video games several times, using college students as subjects. She refined her methodology by controlling for factors such as frequency of recalling dreams.

Gackenbach also wondered if video games affected nightmares, based on the ‘Threat Simulation Theory’ proposed by Finnish cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist Antti Revonsuo. 

Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life - except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their avoidance skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life threatening situation. To test this theory, Gackenbach conducted a study in 2008, using 35 male and 63 female participants. She used independent assessments, which coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something ‘fun’ for a gamer.

Gackenbach explains: ‘What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens. They don't run away, they turn and fight back. They're more aggressive than the norms’.

Levels of aggression in gamer dreams – when aggression did occur in the dream state - also included hyper-violence. Gackenbach claims: ‘If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams. But when they're aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top’.

The gamer dream experience of high ‘hyper-violent’ aggression levels, coupled with little or no fear, inspired Gackenbach to pursue a new study with Athabasca University in Canada. If gaming can act as a semi-protective function against nightmares, then maybe it could help war veterans who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after experiencing combat. She states: ‘I don't think anyone has looked at whether there's been a protective function. It makes a lot of sense, but it's a hypothesis’.

Psychologists consider nightmares as one of the key symptoms of PTSD, and studies have shown incredibly high rates of nightmares ranging from 71 - 96% among PTSD patients. By contrast, just 3 – 5% of civilians reported the same levels of nightmares. Virtual reality simulators have already been used to help PTSD patients gradually adjust to the threatening situations that plague their waking and sleeping thoughts. If Gackenbach's theory is correct, perhaps video games could also help relieve the need for nightmares. Gackenbach hopes to acquire a sleep lab and a virtual reality lab to verify her results, even if studies about video games and dreams have not proven the highest priority for receiving funds. 

Yet studying video games has attracted more interest and respect from colleagues than studying just dreams alone. Some of Gackenbach's more recent work includes studying the violence levels in games, based upon the video game ratings given out by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, and analysing the effect they have upon aggression within dreams.

Game Induced Lucid Dreaming (GILD)

Some lucid dreamers report success in inducing lucid dreams using video games (GILDs – Game Induced Lucid Dreams). There is no official technique for a GILD, as it seems to be one of the various lucid dream induction methods which has emerged from the online lucid dreaming community, and every resource of forum on this topic provides different instructions. I am going to recommend a way to use GILDs which may enable a DILD (Dream-Initiated Lucid Dream – so a lucid dream which occurs when a dreamer’s conscious awareness is triggered within a normal, non-lucid dream). I have not experimented with this lucid dream induction technique, as I prefer to use a basic cognitive induction method, based on the key principles from MILD (Mnemonic/Memory Induced Lucid Dream) and Tholey’s Combined Technique, coupled with Wake-Back-to-Bed and Reality Checking. However, this method for GILD complements these cognitive techniques, so can be used in conjunction. It can also be performed alongside WILDs (Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams).

1. Set an alarm/buzzer to sound periodically throughout your gameplay - so, for example, if you plan to play for 1 hour, set the alarm for every 10 minutes; if you plan to play for 3 hours, set the alarm for every 30 minutes or suchlike
2. Play a video-game – preferably an open-world/sandbox game in the first-person before you go to sleep, for as long as you can
3. Every time the alarm sounds, focus intensively on what is happening in your game. Use the gameplay as a basis for a reality check. Normally, during a reality check, you would perform your physical reality check action (such as trying to push the fingers of one hand through the palm of the other), while focusing on becoming consciously aware of your environment/surroundings so that you are able to draw a correct conclusion as to whether you are awake or in a dream. Instead, focus on what is happening in your game – how can you tell the action on the screen belongs to a virtual reality? What is it about the gameplay which is different from your real-life? If you were shooting zombies – your conclusion might be that zombies don’t exist in real-life, therefore shooting them is something which could only happen in a virtual reality
4. Tell yourself (in your mind or out loud): ‘X (describe whatever is happening right now in your gameplay for example, shooting zombies) can only happen in a dream’ (or words to this effect). Consciously remind yourself that if ‘you’ (the gamer and the game character you are playing) found yourself in the game scenario you are playing right now you would be aware that you are dreaming. Hopefully, if you find yourself in a similar scenario, or doing the same action as in your game (for example, shooting zombies) in a subsequent dream, not only would you recognise the shooting of the zombies as a dreamsign (the odd, bizarre, or impossible things which can only happen in dreams) and then be triggered to perform your usual physical reality check which should confirm that this is indeed a dream, enabling you to become lucid 
5. After playing, go to bed – perform your lucid dream affirmations/auto-suggestion if you are also using the general cognitive methods for lucid dreaming as well as GILD. If not, skip to the next step, which is focusing your mind on your recent gameplay. Try and visualise what you have just witnessed on screen in your imagination/mind’s eye and try to ‘mentally place’ yourself into the visualisation, as if you in the environment of the game and part of the action. This should be easier than normal dream visualisation, because the images you have seen on screen are more likely to be imprinted on your mind. If you also experience hypnagogia before falling fully asleep, be aware that you may see the ‘Tetris Effect’ – which often occurs in people who have been performing a repetitive action in their waking lives. This is useful if you are attempting to use GILD to assist with the ‘dream visualisation’ aspect of WILD
6. Remember to set an alarm if you are also combining GILD with a Wake-Back-to-bed
7. If you are using WB2B, when you awaken for the period in between both phases of sleep, perform your usual physical reality check, do your lucid dream affirmations/auto-suggestion again, and then repeat the video game visualisation you did before you initially went to sleep
8. If you are not doing WB2B, or you have woken up from the second phase of sleep in a WB2B, recall your dream and record it in your dream journal, noting any dreamsigns or day residue (the aspects of the dream which are influenced by our recent waking experiences/memories) – in particular, anything which was influenced by the game you played. If you notice game-related or influenced dream content, then this is a sign that you might soon successfully experience a lucid dream using GILD!

Let me know if this technique for GILD works for you, or if you have your own version of Game Induced Lucid Dreaming!

Binaural Beats & Lucid Dreaming

This is a comprehensive article explaining binaural beats and how they can be used in lucid dreaming. This article attempts to take a balanced view of using binaural beats for lucid dreaming and therefore presents the evidence for and against their successfulness in lucid dream induction. Here are a list of the contents of this article, in chronological order, for your guidance:

CONTENTS

1. Introduction & history of research
2. Cortical oscillation and electroencephalography (EEG)
3. Brainwave frequency bands
4. Neurophysiological origin of binaural beat perception
5. Brainwaves & mental state
6. Brainwave entrainment
7. Binaural beats & brainwave entrainment
8. Binaural beats – the brain, mind & consciousness controversy
9. Binaural beats - the sceptics view
10. The neuroscientific evidence for brainwave synchronization & lucid dreaming
11. Advantages of brainwave entrainment & altered states of consciousness for lucid dreamers
12. Instructions for inducing lucid dreams using binaural beats

Introduction & history of research

A binaural beat is an auditory illusion which is perceived by the listener when 2 different pure-tone sine waves - both with frequencies lower than 1500 Hz, with less than a 40 Hz difference between them - are presented ‘dichotically’ (this means one through each ear). For example, if a 530 Hz pure tone is presented to a listener’s right ear and a 520 Hz pure tone is presented to the listener’s left ear, the listener will perceive the auditory illusion of a third tone, in addition to the 2 pure-tones presented to each ear. The third sound is called a ‘binaural beat’, and the example, presented above, would have a perceived pitch correlating to a frequency of 10 Hz, this being the difference between the 530 Hz and 520 Hz pure tones presented separately to each ear.

Binaural basically means ‘to hear with 2 ears’. Binaural beats were originally discovered in 1839 by physicist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove and the term was first introduced in 1856. The phenomenon was investigated extensively by German philosopher and psychologist, Carl Stumpf (1848 – 1936), in 1916. Stumpf distinguished between diotic listening – the simultaneous stimulation of both ears with the same stimulus; and dichotic listening – the stimulation of both ears with different stimuli. Subsequently, it became known that binaural listening is the means of determining geolocation and the direction of sound.

Binaural hearing was first studied by Scottish-American physician, William Charles Wells (1757 – 1817) in 1792, following his earlier research into binocular vision and how the eyes perceive and mix colours. He wanted to explain how listening with both ears affected the perception of sound. From 1792 – 1802, Italian physicist, Giovanni Battista Venturi (1746 - 1822) conducted a series of experiments which were intended to prove the nature of binaural hearing. He found that the unequal impressions of sound perceived at the same time by both ears is what determined the correct direction of sound. Venturi's experiments were repeated and confirmed by Lord Rayleigh (1842 - 1919), almost 75 years later.

German physicist Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756 - 1827), a contemporary of Venturi who is cited as the ‘father of acoustics’ conducted experiments to investigate the behaviour of vibrating strings and plates and the ways in which sound was perceived. He agreed with Venturi’s conclusion, claiming that the location and direction of sound was determined by detecting differences in a sound between before ears (including amplitude and frequency). He used the term ‘interaural differences’.

English scientist Charles Wheatstone (1802 - 1875); German physicist Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795 – 1878); and August Seebeck (1805 – 1849) also researched the phenomenon of binaural hearing. It was found that binocular vision and binaural hearing did not work the same way; when a different colour was presented to each eye, the colours did not follow the laws of the combination of colours from the different bands of the spectrum, but rather they competed for perceptual attention. Wheatstone found that when the 2 different sounds are presented to each ear, the third sound which results from the coincidence of their vibrations (the ‘grave harmonic) is a form of perceptual fusion.

Binaural hearing received attention from physicist Louis Trenchard More (1870 – 1944);and chemist Harry Shipley Fry (1878 - 1949, both of the University of Cincinnati; scientists H A Wilson and Charles Samuel Myers, of King's College London; and American physicist Alfred M Mayer (1836 – 1897), each of whom conducted experimental investigations with intent to discover the means by which human subjects ascertain the location, origin, and direction of sound, believing this to be in some way dependent on dichotic hearing - listening to sound through both ears.

It was in fact the invention of the stethoscope by René Théophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781 - 1826), which presented a huge leap in our understanding of binaural hearing. Based on the stethoscope, Somerville Scott Alison, who coined the term ‘binaural’, developed the differential stethophone. Unlike the stethoscope which used 2 separate sound-source pieces which enabled the listener to hear and compare sounds from 2 discrete locations, the stethophone has a single sound-source piece which would be placed on the chest, allowing the listener to identify the source of a sound through the process of binaural hearing. Alison referred to his device as a ‘binaural stethoscope’.

Cortical oscillation and electroencephalography (EEG)

Neuron activity generates electrical currents in the brain. The synchronous action of neural ensembles in the cerebral cortex, producing macroscopic oscillations, can be monitored and recorded on a graph by an electroencephalogram (EEG). These oscillations are commonly known as ‘brainwaves’. Neural oscillations – or brainwaves – are rhythmic or repetitive electrochemical activity which happens in the brain and the central nervous system. Neural tissue produces activity within individual neurons, or through interactions between different neurons. Brainwave frequency can also be adjusted to synchronize with the periodicity of an external visual or acoustic stimuli. This is important to remember when we consider how binaural beats might work in practice. 

The technique of recording brainwaves from electrochemical readings taken from the scalp was developed by Richard Caton in 1975 and furthered by the work of Hans Berger (who invented EEG) in the 1920s. Berger first described the frequency bands Delta, Theta, Alpha, and Beta.

Brainwave frequency bands

The fluctuating frequency of oscillations generated by the synchronous activity of cortical neurons, measurable with an electroencephalogram (EEG), via electrodes attached to the scalp, are conveniently categorized into general bands, in order of decreasing frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz) as follows:

• Gamma: 30 - 50 Hz (Transition into the waking state) - increased intelligence and higher mental activity, perception formation of ideas and problem-solving, linguistics, control and willpower, heightened sensory awareness, increased compassion and happiness, fear-responses
• Beta: 14 - 30 Hz (Waking state) - concentration, attention, alertness, arousal, increased energy, emotional stability, cognition, logic, reasoning & critical thinking, anxiety-response/paranoia, ‘fight or flight effect’
• Alpha: 8 - 14 Hz (Awake, but relaxed, meditative or drowsy state – just prior to sleep or upon waking) - unconscious or detached/relaxed focus, relaxation, meditation, light trance, super-learning, increased creativity, serotonin production, pre-sleep & pre-wake drowsiness, beginning to access subconscious mind in the conscious state, heightened intuition, receptiveness to suggestion/hypnosis, increased imagination and visualization, increased motivation, happiness
• Theta: 4 - 8 Hz (During REM/dream sleep) - hypnagogia, trance, deep meditation, heightened receptivity, access to the subconscious mind, increased production of catecholamines (for memory & learning), increased creativity, integrative emotional experiences, inner peace and emotional wellbeing, 
• Delta: 0.1 - 4 Hz (During deep (slow-wave), dreamless sleep) - production of the human growth hormone, production of melatonin, restful and restoration healing of the body, loss of bodily/physical awareness, trance, deep detached meditation, access to the deep subconscious 

In addition, three further wave forms are often differentiated in electroencephalographic studies:

• Mu: 8 - 12 Hz
• Sigma (sleep spindle): 12 - 14 Hz
• SMR (sensory motor rhythm): 12.5 - 15.5 Hz

Neurophysiological origin of binaural beat perception

Binaural beat perception originates in the inferior colliculus of the midbrain and the superior olivary complex of the brainstem. This is where auditory signals from each ear are integrated and precipitate electrical impulses, along neural pathways through the reticular formation up the midbrain to the thalamus, auditory cortex, and other cortical regions.

Brainwaves & mental state

Following the ability to measure such brainwaves, developed by Berger, there has been a ubiquitous consensus that EEG readings depict brainwave wave form patterns which alter over time. 

It has been established that these brainwave patterns correlate with the aspects of the subject's mental and emotional state, mental status, and degree of consciousness and vigilance. EEG measurements, including frequency and amplitude of the brainwaves, correlate with different perceptual, motor and cognitive states. Furthermore, brainwaves alter in response to changes in environmental stimuli - including sound and music. 

The degree and nature of alteration is partially dependent on individual perception - the same stimulus may cause different changes in brainwaves and EEG readings in different people. The process of changing the frequency of brainwaves by synchronizing them with external acoustic of photic stimuli, causing alterations in the cognitive and emotional state of the individual is called neuronal or brainwave entrainment. This is the process we are hopefully performing when we use binaural beats for lucid dreaming.

Brainwave entrainment

Entrainment was originally derived from complex systems theory. It denotes the ways in which 2 or more independent, autonomous autonomous oscillators (with different rhythms of frequencies) interact and mutually influence each other to the degree that they both adjust and start to oscillate at the same frequency. 

The concept of entrainment was first identified by Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens in 1665, who conducted an experiment into the synchronization of clock pendulums. He found that entrainment occurs because small amounts of energy are transferred between the 2 systems which begin out of phase, and this produces negative feedback. As the 2 systems (i.e. the pendulums) assume a more stable relationship the negative energy is gradually reduced to zero – one pendulum (with the greater frequency) slows down and the other (with the lesser frequency) speeds up.

The term entrainment has subsequently been used to refer to a shared tendency of many physical and biological systems which synchronize their periodicity and rhythm through this form of interaction and influence. The main body of research centres on music and acoustics. One of the most familiar examples of neuro-motor entrainment to acoustic stimuli is tapping a foot spontaneously to the rhythm of a song.

Exogenous rhythmic entrainment occurs outside of the body and in many different ways. For example, when we speak, we adjust the rhythm of out speech patterns to the person we are communicating with; and when an audience claps hands, it is usually in rhythmic unison – i.e. ‘in time with everyone else’. 

Research has also shown that even amongst groups of complete strangers, breathing rates, locomotive and subtle expressive motor movements and speech patterns synchronize and entrain in response to acoustic stimuli – such as music with a consistent rhythm. In both humans and some animals (cats and monkeys, for example), repetitive tactile stimulation (i.e. stroking) has been shown to cause changes in brainwaves and EEG readings. Endogenous entrainment occurs within the body and includes the synchronization of human circadian sleep-wake cycles to the 24-hour cycle of light and dark; and the synchronization of a heartbeat to a cardiac pacemaker.

Binaural beats & brainwave entrainment

Brainwaves (neural oscillations) share the fundamental constituents with acoustic and optical wave forms - including frequency, amplitude, and periodicity. Brainwave entrainment is a layman’s term for such 'neural entrainment'. This denotes the way in which brainwaves synchronize with external stimuli, such as light or sound. 

The scientific term for what happens is known as ‘Frequency Following Response effect’ (FFR). This happens when your brain begins to resonate with the binaural beat, or ‘follow’ the beat, and this phenomenon was thoroughly researched and tested in 1973 by biophysicist Gerald Oster at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. His research on binaural beats and the Frequency Following Response was published in Scientific American and paved the way for further development in the area of auditory stimulation to enhance brain functioning.

Uses of audio, with embedded binaural beats (mixed with music, white or pink noise or various forms of background sound), for creating different mental states or states of altered consciousness, is very popular. Binaural beats have been designed for multiple purposes, ranging from relaxation, meditation and stress reduction; pain management; improved sleep quality or decrease in sleep requirements; ‘super-learning’; enhanced creativity and intuition; remote viewing, telepathy, astral projection and out-of-body experience; and lucid dreaming. 

Of course, some of these activities of states of consciousness (specifically those relating to extra-sensory perception or astral projection and OBEs, are disputed and categorized as pseudoscience), but the purpose of this article is not to discredit or debunk reported uses for binaural beats, but rather explain the science behind them and how they might be used, as well as assessing evidence for their effectiveness on the whole. Audio which is embedded with binaural beats is often combined with various meditation techniques, as well as positive affirmations and visualization. 

It is unclear whether passively listening to binaural beats is able to create an altered state of consciousness in the listener. An individual’s subjective response to the binaural beats may be mediated by a number of external factors, for example, the existing emotional or mental state of the listener at the time. For example, someone who is already in a calm and relaxed may be frame of mind may therefore find that using binaural beats for meditation does enhance their experience. 

Likewise, someone who is already focused on a learning task may find that using a binaural beat to increase concentration heightens their cognitive abilities. Therefore, the willingness and inherent abilities of the listener may have an effect on whether binaural beats work for this particular individual. 

Some sceptics claim that binaural beats produce no more than a mere placebo effect for those who believe they will produce a particular result. If this is true, then it doesn’t necessarily suggest binaural beats are ineffective – if using them creates the right frame of mind and assists the listener is achieving their set goal, then use had been beneficial and worthwhile. 

Rossi (1986) found that a receptiveness and willingness to focus may be responsible for some effectiveness of the binaural beat in inducing a change in the listener’s brainwaves. Ultradian rhythms in the nervous system are responsible for changes in arousal and states of consciousness, and some research (Rossi, 1986) suggests that these naturally-occurring shifts may explain why binaural beats have fluctuations in effectiveness. 

Oster (1973) found that using white noise as a background for binaural beats tends to increase perception in the listener. Other practices, such as humming, toning, breathing exercises, autogenic training, and/or biofeedback can also be used to increase the effectiveness of binaural beats in resistant individuals (Tart, 1975).

One of the major problems in studying brain entrainment and the effectiveness of using binaural beats is the fact that humans rarely hear frequencies below 20 HZ, which covers the range of Delta, Theta, Alpha and low-mid Beta brainwaves. One method which has been used is to measure EEG while the subject listens to the binaural beats. 

There is significant evidence which shows that listening to binaural beats can cause auditory driving and brainwaves can be synchronized and entrained to the frequency of the binaural beat. Such readings are supported by self-reported changes in cognitive and emotional states. 

However, many self-reports are based on the use of binaural beats which combined the stimuli with other sounds, such as music or verbal guidance (i.e. guided meditation). This may have an effect or influence on how the listener responds – few studies have isolated the effects of just the binaural beat. 

Some initial research has found that binaural beats may have some influence on low frequency and high frequency components of heart rate and may increase feelings of relaxation. In addition, it is accepted that listening to music and other sounds can cause automatic arousal through entrainment of the brainwaves, especially drum rhythms. 

Some forms of auditory stimulation have been demonstrated to cause improvement in the immune system; facilitate relaxation; improve mood; heighten cognitive functioning; and reduce stress. This suggests that there are many therapeutic advantages to listening to music, regardless of whether the outcome can be attributed to brainwave entrainment – it is the well-established principle upon which receptive music therapy (i.e. the individual listens to music, rather than actively making it) - used in the treatment of a range of physical and mental conditions - is founded. 

Using EEG technology, it is also possible to use neurological music therapy which may contribute to the treatment and management of disorders characterized by impairment to parts of the brain and central nervous system - including stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, autism, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Historically, music and percussive performance (i.e. drumming) has been fundamental to ritualistic ceremony and spiritual practice. Many indigenous people believe it can be used to communicate with spiritual energies and entities. There is no solid scientific evidence which can confirm this, but contemporary research has found that listening to rhythmic sounds – especially percussion – can induce the subjective experience of altered states of consciousness with different brainwave patterns, associated with meditation and hypnosis. The EEG readings of a person who is meditating is comparable to the reading taken from a person listening to Alpha and Theta binaural beats.

Binaural beats – the brain, mind & consciousness controversy

Since the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, questions concerning the nature of the brain, mind and consciousness have been raised, but we have still not resolved the issue of the mind-body relationship and whether consciousness exists as part of the physical brain. 

Modern neuroscientists locate the mind within the physical brain and state that consciousness is the result of electrochemical neurological activity. This would suggest that consciousness can be changed by using external means (such as electrodes) to produce a certain type of electrochemical activity – or brainwave activity.

However, there have been a number of studies which suggest the contrary – that the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the physical brain although this needs to be proven by solid, credible neuroscientific evidence from laboratory studies. 

So far, there has been no neurophysiological research which conclusively proves that higher mental states (for example intuition, insight, creativity, imagination, understanding, reasoning, intent, decision, knowing, will etc) are located in the physical tissue of the brain (Hunt, 1995). These controversies may only be resolved by scientists taking an epistemological shift towards studies which include extra-rational mental activity, rather than focusing on just the neurochemical brain (de Quincy, 1994). Despite this, we are in the midst of an exciting period of science, with modern technology and rapid new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology, leading a new ‘revolution’ in the study of consciousness (Owens, 1995).

We are in the midst of a revolution focusing on the study of consciousness (Owens, 1995). Penfield, an eminent contemporary neurophysiologist, found that the human mind continued to work in spite of the brain’s reduced activity under anaesthesia. Brainwaves were nearly absent, while the mind was just as active as in the waking state. The only difference was in the content of the conscious experience. Following Penfield’s work, other researchers have reported awareness in comatose patients (Hunt, 1995) and there is a growing body of evidence which suggests that reduced cortical arousal, while maintaining conscious awareness, is possible (Fischer, 1971; West 1980; Delmonte, 1984; Goleman 1988; Jevning, Wallace & Beidenbach, 1992; Wallace, 1986; Mavromatis, 1991). These states have been variously referred to as meditative, trance, altered, hypnagogic, hypnotic, and twilight-learning states (Budzynski, 1986). 

These various forms of ‘altered states’ involve the maintenance of conscious awareness in a physiologically reduced state of arousal (Mavromatis, 1991). Recent physiological studies of highly hypnotizable subjects and expert meditators indicate that maintaining awareness with reduced cortical arousal is indeed possible in selected individuals as either a natural ability or as an acquired skill (Sabourin, Cutcomb, Crawford & Pribram, 1993). 

Increasingly, scientists are expressing doubts about the neurologists’ brain-mind model because it fails to answer so many questions about our ordinary experiences, as well as evading our mystical and spiritual ones. Some claim that the scientific evidence supporting the phenomenon of remote viewing alone is sufficient to show that mind-consciousness is not a local phenomenon (McMoneagle, 1993). 

However, these studies have numerous methodological flaws and require support from more rigorous, peer-reviewed, double-blind laboratory studies, which are capable of producing replicable results, before such findings can be cited as legitimate evidence for remote viewing. For many scientists, this research falls firmly within the sphere of pseudoscience.

Questions might arise such as: if mind-consciousness is not the brain, why then does science relate states of consciousness and mental functioning to brainwave frequencies? And how is it that audio with embedded binaural beats alters brainwaves? The first question can be answered in terms of instrumentation; there is no objective way to measure mind or consciousness with an instrument in a laboratory or otherwise – we can only record and analyse that which produces a physical change which can be objectively observed. 

Mind-consciousness appears to be a field phenomenon which interfaces with the body and the neurological structures of the brain (Hunt, 1995). One cannot measure this field directly with current instrumentation or technology. On the other hand, the electrical potentials of brainwaves can be measured and easily quantified because they produce an observable physical change. 

The problem here lies in oversimplification of the observations - EEG patterns measured on the cortex are the result of electroneurological activity of the brain, but the brain’s electroneurological activity is not mind-consciousness. EEG measurements then are only an indirect means of assessing the mind-consciousness interface with the neurological structures of the brain. As crude as this may seem, the EEG has been a reliable way for researchers to estimate states of consciousness based on the relative proportions of EEG frequencies; this is because certain EEG patterns have been historically associated with specific states of consciousness. It is reasonable to assume, given the current EEG literature, that if a specific EEG pattern emerges it is probably accompanied by a particular state of consciousness. 

Therefore, with binaural beats, because we know which frequencies of brainwaves accompany which states of consciousness (we can compare the brainwaves of someone in a deep state of meditation or a dream by monitoring their EEG readings in each state, plus we can monitor corresponding physical signs, such as reduced heart rate, rapid eye movement etc); we know which binaural beats – at the correct frequency and amplitude – to use to encourage the brain to act in a way (synchronise) to create these altered states of consciousness.

This is because audio with embedded binaural beats alters the electrochemical environment of the brain and therefore allows mind-consciousness to have different experiences – altered states of consciousness. Perceived reality changes depending on the state of consciousness of the perceiver (Tart, 1975) - some states of consciousness provide limited views of reality, while others provide an expanded awareness of reality - for example, altered states of consciousness associated with the use of psychedelic drugs). 

Mainly, states of consciousness change in response to the ever-changing internal environment and surrounding stimulation, for example, states of consciousness are subject to influences like drugs and circadian and ultradian rhythms (Rossi, 1986; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1991; Webb & Dube, 1981). Specific states of consciousness can also be learned as adaptive behaviours to demanding circumstances – for example dissociative states as a result of traumatizing physical environment (Green and Green, 1986).

Binaural beats - the sceptics view

One of the main criticisms of binaural beats isn’t focused on the science behind the claims, but rather the rapidly-growing industry for binaural beats, which are sold as part of various brain entrainment packages, profiting from claims that using these programmes or audio products will have extraordinarily successful results in triggering a range of desired mental states or processes. The fact is, you can access the same quality binaural beats for free using Youtube, or even make your own using simply acoustic software, some of which is available online.

Some manufacturers of binaural beat products label them as ‘digital drugs’ and there have even been bold suggestions that using certain binaural beats can mimic the effect of specific pharmaceutical drugs. Any such claims – or promises that using binaural beat technology and brain entrainment can produce ‘super powers’ – should be treated with scepticism. 

The fact is, the states or frequencies of brainwave activity, identified and categorized as alpha, beat, theta, gamma etc are associated with a very broad range of different mental states and processes, all of which are given a very general description, such as ‘relaxed and meditative’ or ‘focused’. Our brains naturally produce these types of brainwave activity at various points, so binaural beats do not create a mental state which we do not experience anyway – they may simply assist us in achieving what our brain can and will ordinarily do in specific circumstances, for example – when we are drifting off to sleep or concentrating on a cognitive task.

Such claims presume that it is possible to pinpoint the precise frequency of the EEG in each of the desired mental states or conditions - the fact is that brainwaves do not work that way. It is wholly and absolutely implausible to say that desired mental state X will occur if the EEG reads exactly Y Hz.

A 2008 study at Hofstra University played two different binaural beats and a control sound (running water) to patients with high blood pressure - there was no difference between results from each of the groups. In one small study from Japan, published in the Journal of Neurophysiology (2006), researchers played various binaural beats to 9 subjects, and observed the resulting EEGs, finding great variability in the results. The conclusion was that listening to binaural beats can produce activity on the human cerebral cortex, however the cause was more likely a conscious auditory reaction and was not correlated to the frequency of the binaural beat. 

A further study published in Clinical Neurophysiology (2005) found that scientists were able to induce a desired frequency in the EEG matching the phantom beat frequency encoded in a binaural beat - however this was with a single subject and was neither blinded nor controlled. A study by Wahbeh, Calabrese & Zwickey, ‘Binaural beat technology in humans: a pilot study to assess psychologic and physiologic effects’ (2007) published in the Journal of Alternative Complementary Medicine found that use of binaural beats could decrease anxiety and produce positive psychological results, based on self-reports. The conclusion of the study was that further research was required to validate and expand upon these initial results. 

The truth is, that listening to any audio/music track can affect our brains in a number of ways – listening to specific types of music can help the listener to relax, become energised or feel a particular emotional response. There is no indication that binaural beats have any deeper more meaningful effect on listeners. 

Some sceptics of the science behind binaural beats suggest that the effects observed in those who claim using binaural beats has brought them success are just placebo effects – the binaural beat was able to create the right ‘frame of mind’ and those who believe in their power and effect are likely to be more suggestible and open to positive results. 

Given there have been recent publications on the successful induction of lucid dreaming using electrodes to change brainwave activity, it is unsurprising that manufacturers have capitalized on the growing fascination with, and popularity of, lucid dreaming. One such gadget is Thefoc.us ‘moovs’ kit, which is marketed specifically for dreaming. The kit consists of a pair of electrodes, a dozen pairs of disposable adhesive electrode gel pads and a tiny transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) device which resembles an iPod nano. The user places some gel pads on the electrodes, places them on each temple, plugs it into the device and loads up one of the programs. The foc.us device then delivers a relatively low electrical current of 1.5 milliamps via the electrodes. The lucid dreaming programme is designed to stimulate the brain after a 10 minute countdown, giving the user time to fall asleep.

Originally, foc.us was designed for use by gamers, to stimulate their brain before playing, as a means to improve focus, according to Michael Oxley, the CEO and founder of foc.us. However, after the device was released online last year, users starting utilising it for different results – for example, dream-hacking. Oxley states: ‘There were some strong papers about increasing working memory and increasing focus, which is ideal for gaming…But a lot of our customers weren’t using it for that. They were using it for other benefits and one of the most popular ones we saw was for lucid dreaming’. This was particularly so after a journal article was published in 2014 which found evidence to support the idea that lucid dreams could be induced by stimulating gamma brainwaves in a sleeping person. This inspired many customers to try to use foc.us in the same way, so the manufacturing team wrote a new programme, specifically designed for the induction of lucid dreaming.

Oxley explains: ‘A positive charge will excite a part of the brain and a negative current will sort of turn off that part of the brain…The higher function areas at the front of the brain are active during lucid dreams, so the idea is that if we excite that while people are dreaming, they’ll have a greater chance of having a lucid dream’. Oxley apparently uses the device nearly every night, and while it doesn’t always work, it has produced some exciting results when it has been successful. 

However, when one of the Vice writers road-tested the foc.us device for a review, she found that the results were not quite as promising as Oxley’s endorsement – the electrodes began to sting the skin after a matter of minutes, forcing her to have to prematurely end the experiment. Her colleagues had no more joy; one removed the electrodes during sleep, while another stated that using the device made him ‘feel weird’ and had a ‘shutter-effect’ on his LED bedside lamp. After the first session, he reported no dreams, despite being a naturally vivid dreamer. A third colleague confessed that the foc.us gave him a weird pain in his head, as if his ‘brain was being squished’. He reported that he might have experienced a lucid dream, but felt that his brain just wanted him to believe that he had, and he was unable to actually recall whether he did or not – it seems likely that he did not experience a lucid dream, given he has no memory of doing so.

Oxley claims that the $300 foc.us device is undergoing technological improvement – there is hope that it can be developed to make it wireless and able to detect when the user falls asleep. Oxley says that sales figures indicate a huge initial popularity for the product: ‘We were amazed. We sold out our first 2 batches way quicker than we thought we would and now there are 2 or 3 big, VC-funded companies out in Silicon Valley doing the same thing. While it’s currently a small market, it won’t be long before Apple starts selling a brain stimulator’.

The neuroscientific evidence for brainwave synchronization & lucid dreaming

One exciting piece of research has demonstrated that changing the activity of brainwaves using electrodes in a laboratory study was able to produce lucid dreams in participants. The study, U Voss & A Hobson et al, ‘Induction of self-awareness in dreams through frontal low current stimulation of gamma activity’ (2014), published in the Nature Neuroscience journal, tested recent findings that linked fronto-temporal gamma electroencephalographic (EEG) activity to conscious awareness in dreams, The study demonstrates that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences ongoing brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness (i.e. lucidity) in dreams. Other stimulation frequencies were not effective, suggesting that higher order consciousness is indeed related to synchronous oscillations around 25 - 40 Hz.

Alan Hobson, psychiatrist and sleep researcher at Harvard University, said of the results: ‘I never thought this would work…But it looks like it does’. His colleague, Ursula Voss, of J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt - who designed the experiments – stated: ‘[The participants] were really excited…The dream reports were short, but long enough for them to report, 'Wow, all of the sudden I knew this was a dream, while I was dreaming’…If I'm aware, if I'm self-reflective, if I'm thinking about myself, about my past and future, that's normally a waking function…In lucid dreaming, we transfer elements of waking consciousness into the dream’.

The overlap between lucid dreaming and brainwave activity related to the waking state was reflected in the brainwaves the researchers detected using EEG. While normal non-lucid dreaming has its own specific brainwave patterns, when dreamers have lucid dreams, they show gamma waves - an activity pattern that is linked to consciousness, but is nearly absent during sleep and normal non-lucid dreaming. The gamma activity in the brainwaves of lucid dreamers is especially seen in the brain's frontal cortex. In the study, the researchers placed electrodes on the scalps of 27 participants - who were not ‘natural’ lucid dreamers - to stimulate the frontal cortex, and recreate the gamma wave activity that has been seen in lucid dreamers.

Over 4 nights, they applied the 30-second bolts of electrical currents to the participants' scalps, 2 minutes after the participants had entered the dreaming stage of sleep (i.e. REM sleep), as shown by their brainwave activity patterns. The frequency of stimulation varied from 2 Hz -100 Hz, and sometimes the researchers didn't actually deliver any electrical currents. The participants were then immediately woken up to report their dreams to an interviewer who wasn't aware of which stimulation they had received via the electrodes. 

The EEG data showed that the brain's gamma activity increased during stimulation with 40 Hz, and to a lesser degree during stimulation with 25 Hz - stimulation with other frequencies didn't lead to any changes in the brainwaves, and it didn't increase the likelihood of people having lucid dreams. The researchers also found that after stimulation, if people did experience a lucid dream, the gamma activity increased even more. Voss stated: ‘We were surprised that it's possible to force the brain to take on a frequency from the outside, and for the brain to actually vibrate in that frequency and actually show an effect’.

Lucid dreams represent a unique opportunity for scientists to observe the brain change from one state of consciousness to another, and the new results produced by this innovative and significant study suggest it may have become easier to detect and analyse such changes using brain scan technology. Hobbs explained: ‘Instead of waiting for things to happen, you can actually now do experiments, deliver stimulus and see what happens. It gives you much more classical stimulus-response handle on consciousness itself. It's amazing…It lets us see that consciousness is clearly a brain function. We knew that anyway, but the mechanisms are not clear, and this puts a new spin on it’.

Beyond advancing the scientific understanding of what happens during lucid dreams, the new findings may add insight to the broader research on the nature of human consciousness. Scientists have previously proposed that gamma waves are related to widespread synchronization of brainwave activity and an important aspect of consciousness. The new findings add to the evidence that gamma activity is related to consciousness, and make it more likely that such activity is actually causing consciousness.

However, while this is exciting news for lucid dreamers, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the same results can be produced at home, using binaural beats to synchronise brainwaves. This does not mean that it is not worth experimenting with, but my advice is to use binaural beats that you can access free of charge online, for example, on Youtube, and to maintain reasonable expectations about likelihood of success. 

For the best possible chances of success in inducing lucid dreams – either with or without use of binaural beats – you should be practicing cognitive techniques which programme your mind to become conscious in the dream state. Using binaural beats alongside the cognitive induction methods for lucid dreaming, is a ‘belt and braces’ approach, and guarantees your best possibility of attaining self-awareness (i.e. consciousness/lucidity) in the dream state. Using binaural beats in conjunction with the cognitive methods for inducing lucid dreams may assist you in focusing your mind on achieving your goals and create the right mind-frame or atmosphere for lucid dreaming. 

Advantages of brainwave entrainment & altered states of consciousness for lucid dreamers

Supposedly, when the brain is entrained to lower frequencies and awareness is maintained, a unique state of consciousness emerges. This state is often referred to as hypnagogia ‘mind awake/body asleep’ – this being the state which practitioners of the WILD (Wake-Initiated/Induced Lucid Dream) technique try to induce; and the state those who experience false awakenings with sleep paralysis over emerge into, when in a ‘wake-sleep limbo’. 

Slightly higher-frequency entrainment are thought to lead to hyper-suggestive states of consciousness which allow self-hypnosis – perfect for those who wish to implant the seed for lucid dreaming into their mind using cognitive techniques for lucid dreaming, such as the MILD (Nmemonic/Memory Induced Lucid Dream) or Tholey’s Combined Technique, both of which involve re-programming the mind to become a fertile ground for lucidity to happen. In particular, auto-suggestion, which is the use of a positive affirmation or mantra which you repeat – almost unconsciously – while in a deeply relaxed, meditative state, either during the day or just prior to sleep (i.e. ‘I will be aware I am dreaming’) could be performed extremely successfully while in this state of hyper-suggestiveness. 

Still higher-frequency EEG states are associated with alert and focused mental activity needed for the optimal performance of many tasks and cognitive exercises – these states would be ideal for using the intention aspect of cognitive lucid dream induction – mentally focusing your awareness and intention on positively achieving an outcome. 

Additionally, it might be useful to use these states of consciousness for consciousness-centred lucid dreaming induction methods which require you to have an intense focus on a goal or process. For example, when reality checking, it is important to combine the physical act of the reality check with the ‘consciousness’ aspect: questioning your conscious state (awake or dreaming?) and how you know you are in waking reality (outcome of the reality check; physical sensations; environmental clues; mental processes; behaviour of others/objects etc) and actively draw a conclusion supported by your evidence. 

This not only works on the cognitive level of ‘implanting’ a behaviour (the physical reality check coupled with the questioning of reality/dreaming), by establishing a habit you perform regularly enough during your waking day to then appear in your dreams (even by way of ‘day residue), but also the ‘learning’ level; you are enhancing your mental cognition skills. In using a state of heightened mental focus to then analyse your own state of consciousness by paying direct attention to small details of your environment, changes in your physical self and suchlike, you are encouraging yourself to become more ‘consciously aware’ of your own reality and perception of it. Becoming lucid in a dream requires you to adopt brain functions and cognitive skills associated with your waking brain: analysis, rationality, logic, comparison, memory recall etc. All of these functions are ‘switched off’ when we dream, which is why we accept the bizarre and impossible or contradictory content of our dreams as real enough that we do not question their reality while we are dreaming them. 

Using cognitive techniques for DILDS (Dream-Initiated/Induced Lucid Dreams) require us to hack our brains to the extent that we make these mental functions associated with our waking brain ‘switch on’ in the dream state, so that we are able to become consciously aware that we are dreaming. This is why recognising dreamsigns (the bizarre, impossible, contradictory, dream-like aspects of a dream which indicate to the conscious mind that they can only exist in the dream state) and performing reality checks with conscious awareness enabling the correct conclusion to be drawn, are powerful methods for lucid dreaming, which are learnt and practiced in the waking day, using techniques of focus and concentration. 

Instructions for inducing lucid dreams using binaural beats

Always listen to binaural beats using headphones!

• Whenever you are performing auto-suggestion (during waking day or just prior to sleep) – try ALPHA (for duration of auto-suggestion exercise) – suggestion: 10 minutes per session
• Whenever you are performing intention – try ALPHA (during waking day or just prior to sleep) or BETA (only during waking day) – suggestion: 10 minutes per session

The following instructions require you to make a binaural beats playlist as you will be using binaural beats during sleep and therefore will need the beat frequencies to change at relevant times. These instructions (with and without Wake-Back-to-Bed method) are based on the ‘average’ 8-hour sleep cycle. I have included an image for your information. If you do not have an 8-hour sleep cycle, you will need to adjust the times based on your own pattern of sleep, which may require some trial and error and experimentation.

Basically, we have REM (dream sleep) interspersed throughout the sleep cycle, as shown. The best time for lucid dreaming is the last period of REM sleep, just before waking (marked in yellow). This occurs around 5 – 6 hours into the 8-hour sleep cycle, after we have had all of our deep (DELTA wave) sleep (marked in purple). This is the period of REM sleep we will be targeting for lucid dreaming in the following 2 methods:

Sleep Cycle – No Wake-Back-to-Bed

1. Affirmations & auto-suggestion prior to sleep (10 minutes): ALPHA (marked on chart in pink)
2. Deep sleep (6 hours) – DELTA (period marked on chart in purple)
3. Lucid Induction during last period of REM sleep (2 hours): THETA (1 hour) & GAMMA (1 hour) (period marked on chart in yellow)
4. Wake up

Sleep Cycle – With Wake-Back-to-Bed

1. Affirmations & auto-suggestion prior to sleep (10 minutes): ALPHA
2. Deep sleep (6 hours) – DELTA (period marked on chart in purple)
3. WAKE UP (marked on chart with pink star) – perform affirmations/auto-suggestion using ALPHA (10 – 15 minutes) (period marked on chart in pink)
4. Return to sleep - Lucid Induction during last period of REM sleep (2 hours): THETA (1 hour) & GAMMA (1 hour) (period marked on chart in yellow)
5. Wake up

Lucid Dream Induction during Afternoon Nap:

1. Affirmations & auto-suggestion prior to sleep (10 minutes): ALPHA
2. Use THETA - GAMMA for duration of nap (recommended nap time: 1.5 – 2 hours)