Lucid dreaming (LD) is one of the most fascinating parts of human consciousness, where you realize you are actually dreaming while you’re still asleep and, in some situations, can decide what happens next. There is a growing interest in lucid dreaming among scientists, but research is often scattered across different fields and long-term evidence of how it affects our health is lacking. So, a group of researchers conducted a massive review of existing studies to pull all the evidence together and discovered that this state of mind could help treat mental health issues like chronic nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Understanding lucid dreaming
The team analyzed 38 peer-reviewed studies involving both healthy adults and those with conditions such as PTSD or Parkinson’s disease. They included only research that demonstrated lucid dreaming with objective data, such as specific eye-movement signals or brainwave patterns measured by an EEG (electroencephalogram).
Their review is published in the journal Annals of Medicine & Surgery.
When people enter a lucid dream, certain areas of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex (PFC), become more active. This region is associated with several key functions, including planning and decision-making, impulse control, working memory, and focus. During regular dreaming, it is usually much less active.
Some of the studies reviewed by the team also show increased gamma-band activity (around 40 Hz) in the frontal regions. These fast brainwaves are linked to higher-level thinking and help dreamers realize they are dreaming.
This awareness gives them a sense of control, which the researchers believe means that lucid dreaming could be used as a treatment for nightmares and PTSD.
Healing through dream control
For example, the researchers suggest that because lucid dreamers can confront and change the content of their dreams, treatments could be designed to help those with PTSD break the cycle of reliving traumatic memories. In other words, change or reframe a scary dream into a harmless one.
“Although evidence remains preliminary, LD shows promise as a therapeutic remedy for PTSD and anxiety symptoms, including a reduction in nightmares,” wrote the researchers in their paper. “It combines neuroscience and self-agency, highlighting the need for more funding and public awareness campaigns to harness its scientific and clinical prospects.”
While the study authors caution that their findings are still in the early stages, they believe future studies could explore using wearable technology to help people induce lucid dreaming on their own at home, away from a clinical setting.