A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress, also known as a conscious dream. When the dreamer is lucid, he or she can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can be extremely real and vivid depending on a person’s level of self-awareness during the lucid dream.

A lucid dream can begin in one of two ways. A dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD) starts as a normal dream, and the dreamer eventually concludes that he or she is dreaming, while a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD) occurs when the dreamer goes from a normal waking state directly into a dream state with no apparent lapse in consciousness. Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established.

Lucid dreaming is a state, when one is caught in limbo between waking and REM dreaming. EEG data collected by Ursula Voss, PhD, suggest that during lucid dreaming the brain stem generates REM sleep dreaming, but the reactivation of certain areas of the cortex enables the person to simultaneously be in a waking state. However, Dr. Hobson stated, lucid dreaming is a very unstable state that is difficult to study, because the subject tends not to remain lucid but rather wakes up or falls back into REM sleep dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is “a hybrid state that features both waking and dreaming consciousness in REM sleep,” Dr. Hobson said. “The next step [for study] will be to put these subjects in a scanner and find out whether there are differences in regional brain activation that correspond” to recent findings on the subject.

Dr. Hobson concluded that “waking consciousness is the highest achievement of evolution. By having waking consciousness, we are able to plan, to give talks, to understand each other, and to achieve enormous cognitive capability. This hasn’t happened by accident, as we don’t learn to be awake after we are born. We have dream consciousness already in place when we are born, and we build on top of it a sense of agency, movement, sensation, and emotion-all the details of individual experience.”