Lucid dreams. Had any? I’ve experienced some. What causes them? Is there any research? How does that compare to what’s portrayed in movies? An android future?

• Scientific American > “Are You a Lucid Dreamer?” by Gary Stix, Jeffery DelViscio (July 24, 2023) – An interview with sleep expert Isabelle Arnulf, head of the Sleep Disorders Clinic, Pitié Salpêtrière University Hospital, Paris.

Arnulf: Lucid dreams is being aware of dreaming while you are still dreaming without awakening. Sometimes you realize you’re dreaming and it wakes you up, but a lucid dreamer can remain asleep. And as soon as they realize that they are dreaming, many of them can act or change some of their dreams. Most of them try, for example, to fly and you can also change your dream to make them more agreeable, …

Arnulf: … if you’re not spontaneously a lucid dreamer, it may be difficult to acquire. You need three to six months of training to get to proficient lucid dreamers. But there are some people trying to develop some other techniques to accelerate the ability to become aware that you are dreaming when you are dreaming.

Arnulf: Until our recent work on lucid dreaming, it was thought that you could not communicate with somebody asleep and dreaming. But we were able to do that in the series of patients. We were able to ask them some questions where they were asleep and they were able to answer, not with their mouth, but with some signs from their body, like pointing or smiling.

For example, it was possible to know if time was the same during our dreams and doing reality using some signals sensed by the lucid dreamers like counting from 0 to 10, during dreams and doing the same during wakefulness. And it was shown that it was the same duration.