ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the first causal evidence that lucid dreaming can be induced, and perhaps more significantly, it allows for a framework in which it is possible to study changes in self-awareness while they occur. Dreams in REM sleep are generally only accessible to us through our phenomenal consciousness. In lucid dreaming, the dreamer enters a dream stage during which they become reflective. Thus, lucid dreaming provides an excellent opportunity to study what happens in the brain when people change between a non-reflective and a highly reflective state of consciousness. While the details are highly technical, they used an electrical brain stimulation technique that can influence neural activity in the brain in somewhat similar manner as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), but the electrical stimulation is silent and cannot be felt, therefore it doesn't wake the sleeper up. They stimulated the participants' brains at various frequencies and monitored the participants' brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG).
