Dr Karen Conkley

Yes.

So I studied the neuroscience of dreams.

And so in a lot of my studies, I'm doing sleep research where we put electrodes on people's heads to measure their sleep stages.

And then we ask them to do specific things in their dreams.

And then we wake them up and ask what they were dreaming about.

Yes, because they're within the dream and realize that they're dreaming, it's a really valuable tool for science because they can do specific tasks and listen for instructions, even though they're completely asleep.

Yeah.

So in one study, we demonstrated that lucid dreamers could communicate with experimenters in real time.

So you might have experienced an alarm clock getting incorporated into your dream.

And we took advantage of that phenomenon to quietly present people with questions such as quiet math problems or yes or no questions or, you know, even tactile questions like how many times did we tap you on the hand?

And then dreamers responded from within the dream by, for instance, looking left, right for each number in their response.

And this eye movement pattern we can detect in their sleeping body.

And it really stands out over what would normally happen during a REM sleep dream.

Yes.

And it is funny because they don't hear everything that we ask.

They only hear it every now and then.

It's like these transient moments when people can be aware and connected to these two worlds at the same time.

And a lot of the times they're just within the dream and they can't perceive it, the questions.

Yeah, we're completely sure.

First of all, the signals that people give in dreams are like they barely ever happen by coincidence.