Episode 6: Mr Sandman Give Me a (Lucid) Dream What The Sh*t

In Episode 6 of WTS we talk about a recent study that came out where researchers where able to make contact with lucid dreamers while they were actively dreaming; topics include: 

• What is sleep? 

• What is dreaming? 

• How do we measure sleep? 

• What happened in the study and where this could lead future research?



References: 

Ferreira, B. (2021, February 18). Scientists achieve real-time communication with lucid dreamers in breakthrough. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.vice.com/en/article/4admym/scientists-achieve-real-time-communication-with-lucid-dreamers-in-breakthrough

Konkoly, K. R., Appel, K., Chabani, E., Mangiaruga, A., Gott, J., Mallett, R., . . . Paller, K. A. (2021). Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during rem sleep. Current Biology. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.026

For more about the hypnogogic state: https://www.healthline.com/health/hypnagogia

Walker, M. P. (2018). Why we sleep: The new science of sleep and dreams. London: Penguin Books.

https://nypost.com/2017/09/25/your-office-coffee-cup-likely-is-covered-in-poop/

UC Berkeley Courses

The Psychology of Sleep taught by Matthew Walker Ph.D, PSY133



Pobody's Nerfect


11:58

I say "Limbic system" what I mean is lymphatic system which is why in the brain with the glia its dubbed glymphatic system.

25:46 

I say adrenaline, this incorrect. Adrenaline is a trademark for a synthetic version of epinephrine or norepinephrine which is what I actually mean to say. 

31:58

I am speaking about participants in the study and I say there are three, this is misleading. There are three groups of participants, that include those I listed, but they had several participants around the world varying between 1 and 30 per study done in each lab. 

32:34

I mention the definition of narcolepsy is different than what I had learned, but here is a direct excerpt from the study by Konkoly et al., "We have recently shown that patients with narcolepsy had many advantages for lucid dreaming research. First, 78% of these patients were lucid dreamers, achieving an average of 8 lucid dreams per month without any specific training. Furthermore, narcolepsy, by definition, is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and abnormal transitions between wakefulness and REM sleep including rapid entry into REM sleep. These unique features allow collection of lucid REM sleep episodes in only a few day- time naps in a sleep lab. Of note, the overall structure of sleep is conserved in narcolepsy. Although some EEG features have been identified during narcoleptics’ REM sleep (e.g., increased alpha power), none of these features were sufficient to differentiate REM sleep in narcolepsy from REM sleep in healthy controls" (2021). [Bolding and underline is added by myself]. 

45:29 

I talk about neuroplasticity and how it is like muscles, which is technically true, but I want to clarify that neuroplasticy has ebbs and flows throughout childhood and teen years and then in adulthood there are specific areas of the brain that still have the ability to grow new neurons. This is still a hotly debated area of research whether adult neuroplasticity truly exists.  

48:22

I talk about how I think it was an epidemiologist that said that poop is in your coffee cup, it was a microbiologist. 




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