Have you suffered from a stroke/ brain disorder and are a Lucid dreamer? Would you like to advance our neuroscientific understanding of the dreaming brain? I am medical student from Berlin, doing research on the biological function of dreaming. I am very curious to find people who’s ability for lucid dreaming changed due to a stroke or other brain injuries/ disease. I would love to learn more about these alterations: loss or gain of the ability for lucid dreaming/ changes in the dream content/ dreamscape, all of that… Finding people who are LD and suffered from a stroke is as you can imagine a quite difficult task, so i really hope joining this forum might lead somewhere! Please reach out if you have any questions or think you might have something to contribute! Thank you and kind regards, Max-Pelgrom de Haas
Indeed !
Since our -normal- dreams look alike the day to day reality we experiment, I guess the dreamscape after a stroke would look alike the reality one experiment after a stroke.
But guessing appart, this is interesting a topic, since it binds some other topics together. I personally always thought, and still think, I will die of a stroke in my right hemisphere (since I have had a sensation / tiny pain / migraine here for more than 20 years now -is this due to an oversized artery ?-).
Also, as you may already know if our consciousness is “shut down” during ND, it is also for a natural optimization reason : consciousness uses brain cortex and then a lot of energy. To save this apparently “useless” energy, our metabolism then lowers our consciousness during our sleep. Concretly our brain “decides” to reduce its activity.
The point I want to eventually reach is that if ND and a fortiori LD (even more activity, gamma wave / rythm) cost a lot of energy for the brain*, they are also very creative thanks to it (more blood and oxygen in the brain cortex).
Science also knows that your IWL activities / exercises tranforms / shapes your brain (brain plasticity), and that in return your brain cartography has a huge influence on your reality.
In the end all this to say, that LD may be powerful opportunities -even more powerful than ND- for the brain to reshape / recreate itself.
- Personnaly, often after a WBTB followed by a LD, I wake up later since I “skipped” / leap over one 90mn sleep cycle, hence a certain body tiredness, and lateness.
Edit : I catched a contradiction in my explanations; I will try to edit to be clearer.
Edit 2 : ok, during REM sleep and ND consciousness is a bit lower compared to IWL, but still much higher than during delta and theta rythms / sleep phases. During LD, consciousness -even if its level may vary a lot of course- may be even higher than during IWL.